In the words of Lizzie McAlpine, home is wherever Agnes is singing tonight. With a packed crowd, Agnes A Cappella performed their fall concert on Nov. 12 in the Pause. Agnes, St. Olaf’s treble a cappella ensemble, delivered a concert full of love, passion, and most of all, fun. The group members, who call themselves “the besties,” invited everyone into the friendship as they hyped up their soloists, said hi to friends and family in the audience, and danced along to their songs.
After opening with Taylor Swift’s breakup anthem “Forever and Always,” each member introduced themself with their year, pronouns, and majors, ranging from psychology to music performance. The group then began Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” before restarting. Soloist Shelby Louk ’23 joked about forgetting the words and invited the crowd to sing along with the group. Keeping with the theme of strong female artists, they then performed Haim’s sultry song “Gasoline,” taking advantage of the original harmonies from the Haim sisters and Taylor Swift. In the sweeter and softer “18” by One Direction, soloist Emma Silvestri ’24 showed great vocals and personality, jokingly doing an Irish accent to match singer Niall Horan. The group ended the first half of their performance with Lake Street Dive’s “What I’m Doing Here.” For intermission, The Limestones, St. Olaf’s tenor-bass a capella group, performed Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom,” adding an extra verse proclaiming “Stacy’s dad has got me down bad”. Hill Harmonics, St. Olaf’s mixed-voice a capella group, then took the stage to perform Seeing Double’s indie rock song “Leah.”
Agnes opened their second act with Maggie Rogers’ “Alaska,” featuring a soft descant line and fun accompaniment to the solo line. The group then snapped and sang along to Couch’s jazzy love song “Easy to Love.” In the next piece, El Pike’‘25 sang and scatted the solo line for Laufey’s “Best Friend.” Following the theme of soft and sweet love songs, Agnes performed Lizzie McAlpine’s “Apple Pie” and Brandi Carlile’s “You and Me on the Rock,” with “the besties” hugging and cheering for each soloist in between pieces.
For their penultimate song, the group turned away from softer love songs in their performance of “That’s Where I Am” by Maggie Rogers. The group was able to have fun turning the instrumental accompaniment of the alternative indie song into vocals. For their final piece, Alexys Sayegh ’24 imitated Beyonce’s call to “bring the beat in” before singing “Love on Top.” The group had an infectious energy as they danced along to the song while Sayegh made the many key changes in the piece look easy. The concert ended in thunderous applause as the group members hugged and cheered on stage.
Agnes A Cappella will be performing alongside Hill Harmonics and the Limestones for an a cappella collaboration concert on Dec. 11 on the Pause Mane Stage. Agnes will also be holding auditions for a soprano one spot, with more information being shared through email soon.
