Cafe Samo goes digital- and it's better than ever

By Rachel Levin, Copy Editor

On Apr. 23 Samo’s choir program put on their yearly student showcase, Café Samo, and despite its virtual setting, the show was as spectacular as ever. In fact, it might have been better than previous years, as performers had the freedom to shoot their acts as music videos, bringing the level of creativity up a notch.

Café Samo, an entirely student-run and auditioned coffee-house-style event, was the last in-person show the choir program put on last year before COVID-19. This year, the show was entirely prerecorded and compiled into a video posted on Vimeo, but the quality, if anything, was taken up a notch. Notable performances include Maxine Knustayas’s (’21) black and white rendition of the Arctic Monkeys’ “Arabella”, filmed just like song’s music video, Johanna James (’22) and Olivia Landon’s (’22) lo-fi cover of “I Know the End” by Phoebe Bridgers and Raeva Vasisht’s (’23) one-woman band performance of “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye, but these are only few of many.  

One of these performers, Sydney DeFranco (’23) took on a particularly large project, as she wrote, produced and performed a ballad titled “Spring Equinox” complete with layered vocals, complex visuals and a horn section. It was DeFranco’s first year participating in Café Samo, but enjoyed it nonetheless. Her song in particular captured the spirit of Café Samo online— transporting listeners to a world of music to wash away their stress.

“I know a lot of us have spent so much time in our rooms, and for me, when I was getting tired of just being here all day, I would listen to composers like Debussy and Chopin and picture that I was in this beautiful flower field, like a painting by Monet, and that would make everything seem like normal. That was the idea behind [Spring Equinox],” DeFranco said.

Mandy Wolf (’21), one of three senior directors who oversaw Café Samo, helped audition and compile the acts that made up this year’s show. She, Alex Homami and Lindzi Hutchinson worked hard to make the virtual concert just as good as the live one and, ultimately, she believes it came out incredible.

“We tried our best, and it turned out really well, so we’re really proud of that,” Wolf said.

The leaders also changed the guidelines for what the auditioned performances should be. This included no sad songs and for students to be as creative as possible. Still, with new challenges come potential improvements, and not everything went perfectly as planned.

“More communication and more coherent instructions, would be good [for next time],” Wolf said.

Nevertheless, the show was balanced well between upbeat, humorous performances like Minya Pertel and Tara Sung’s “Love is an Open Door” and “Careless Whisper” performed enthusiastically by Hutchinson, Knustayas and Karina Gunn (’21). 

Although Café Samo is student run, choir director Jeffe Huls still has some say in the production. According to him, the whole thing went incredibly well.

“I think, by and large, 95% of the acts were pretty successful. I was blown away,” Huls said.

In fact, the success of virtual Café Samo inspired Huls to start thinking about a similar “music video night” for the future.

“Not instead of Café Samo, but another evening like that next spring. You know, easy to enjoy at home,” Huls said.