Creatively captivating Cafe Samo
In a two-day evening performance, Cafe Samo opened its doors for an annual concert held inside the Humanities Center Theatre. The student-led event, this year organized under directors Celine Hutchinson (’25), Sam Rubin (’25), Isabella Salem (’25) and Chloe Senior (’25), featured acts from an array of musical genres that wooed and awed the crowd in a cozy and vibrant atmosphere.
Opening acts of the concert featured acapella groups “Beauty Shop”, “Barbershop” and “Valkyries” each with their unique styles that helped successfully kick off the event. Renditions of classics with strong vocals and group singing stood out in the first half of the night. But perhaps, with confident, powerful, and emotional deliveries, the biggest highlights of the first half were the solo songs, “Drive”, “Pearl Diver” and “Haven’t Met You Yet”, each performed by Alejandro Poza (’26), Celine Hutchinson and Ansel Brodkin (’27). The latter half was also met with numerous solos, with standout moments including “Favorite Crime” performed by Chloe Senior, and “You’re Nobody ‘Til Somebody Loves You” performed by Conner Perry (’27). Covers of popular songs like “Good Luck Babe”, “Maneater”, and ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love” also garnered large applause in the latter half.
Hutchinson explained more about the process involved in the making of the show.
“The first thing that took a lot of work in production for the event was judging and going through the different acts and deciding which ones would be the best on stage, how many group acts we needed to balance out with solo acts and the different songs and genres to have a nice blend of everything,” Hutchinson said. “After that, it was mostly working with different instrumentalists, some band people, and a lot of people who play piano and guitar to pull people’s acts together.”
The wide variety of singers and genres, accompanied by skillfully and passionately played instruments, ranging from violins, guitars, piano, drums, saxophones and more, truly ensured that the audience was constantly kept enthralled in the music.
Andy Rowles (’25) who performed “Northern Attitude” with Charlie Blanchard (’25), explained more about how he grew through this experience.
“This was my first time ever performing a pop song on stage, because I’m used to doing only musical theater. It was also my first time arranging an act myself, and I was super nervous, but it worked out really well,” he said. “[The concert] got me better at performing with a live band, which I’ve never done before. It also helped me because I was in charge of my act, so organizing it, I had to put a lot of effort into that.”