sing!

Another Sing! season has come and gone and now we can get back to AP history and studying for the SAT. This year didn't disappoint. Sing! is a NYC high school institution, which started at Midwood HS in 1947. It is an original theatrical musical competition with teams from each class. Popular music is played by a live band with original lyrics along with student designed sets and costumes. Performances are judged and highly coveted bragging rights are awarded. I regularly attend the Sing! performances at Murrow and Stuy which have very different styles of performance.

Murrow had its usual high energy chorus extravaganzas this year. I have to give a shout out to the Junior/Soph team for their group work. With a chorus of 140, they believe it was the largest group effort in school history and nicely done. The high energy, high volume, synchronized dancing extravaganza just barely lost out to some snappy writing from the Senior/Frosh entry. "Argh, The Musical" was a witty pirate escapade that included a puppet narrator, a mermaid, a Capt. Jack Sparrow inspired spy and a freshman sized parrot. The Murrow Sing!, true to its musical comedy roots is a Broadway style show with the chorus numbers integral to the story. There is a great premium placed on high volume, high energy performances and it just isn't Sing! until your ears are ringing.

This year's Stuy Sing! was a huge upset. For the first time in a decade the Senior entry came in second. Yet again it is all about the writing. I like to describe the Stuy Sing! as akin to the Nutcracker's dance of many nations. It isn't over until the Ballywood number. The best of Stuy Sing! is always pun heavy and the excellent and exotic musical numbers (belly dancing, Greek dancing, step and ballroom) are often anachronistic interludes between the punning. This year the Juniors won with a film noirish take on breakfast cereal, called "Cereal Killer". Spoiler alert: Captain Crunch did it. There were nice turns by Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam, a show stopping "At Last" by the Cerrios bee and a rousing tap/swing number by the Lucky Charms. Next year's Juniors have their work cut out for them.