Senior Sirens say an emotional goodbye

On April 11, the auditorium in Mudd Hall overflowed with the beautifully melodic voices of the JHU Sirens, as the a cappella group put on an amazing night’s performance.

Its spring concert’s theme revolved around superheroes, and the ladies made an attempt to demonstrate to the audience their ability to fight crime with their powerful voices. All clad in black dresses, these ladies swept the audience off its feet with their sarcastic humor, harmonies and show of endearing friendships.

The concert also featured performances by Vocal Minority, an all-male a cappella group from Villanova University. The group performed three songs in total: “Stacey’s Mom,” “Hall of Fame” and “All These Things That I’ve Done.”

The set list of songs performed by The Sirens included “I Really Want It,” a “Stay”/“Say Something” mashup, a “Don’t Stop Believing”/“Edge of Glory” mashup, “Counting Stars,” “Somebody to Love,” “Brave,” “Fire and Rain,” a Beatles medley and, last but not least, “Yeah!” as the encore song.

As an entirely student-run group, Sirens members arranged and performed all of the songs themselves. It was clear that they had put in tireless hours of practice into perfecting the night’s performance because they did an amazing job with each and every single song.

All of the songs, despite being covers, brought something unique to the performance and captivated the audience with their emotion. This was especially true for the Senior Send-Offs.

The spring concert was particularly important, as well as emotional, because The Sirens were saying goodbye to some of their senior members. The Senior Send-Off ceremony was dedicated to Angela Dunay, president; Mary Treinen, co-performance director; Kerry Moriarty; Nicole Hayes, business manager; and Sami Carter, webmaster and a junior who will be leaving early.

Members who will be leaving were singled out individually by younger members who took the time to express their heartfelt feelings about them through letters and speeches. Seniors were also given gift bags filled with gifts suited particularly for them.

These gifts included photo albums, lockets and even puzzles. The one thing that all of these gifts had in common, however, was that they were all picked out with great love and thoughtful consideration by the other members.

The Senior Send-Off ceremony was a very personal and emotional experience, and even many of the audience members felt shaken by the strong bond of love and sisterhood that The Sirens shared with one another.

The concert also included the showing of a video, featuring the members of The Sirens parodying of the reality TV show The Bachelor. The video was hilariously sarcastic and especially poked fun at the senior members, who were not included in its making. The video ended with a tribute to all the senior members of The Sirens who would be leaving. There were clips of family members and friends congratulating the seniors for all their accomplishments and the years of hard work they had dedicated to The Sirens.

As the only all-female a cappella group on campus, The Sirens occupy a very special niche within the Hopkins a cappella community.

According to the group’s website, Ani Pahlwaniam founded the group in the fall of 1994. The Sirens were officially the third a cappella group on campus, and its first concert was held in February of 1996.

Since then, the ladies have kept up a tradition of loyalty and support among its members and share a beautiful bond through music, one of the most amazing avenues of art. The audience reflected this bond; the numerous Sirens alumni were present to support the current Sirens.

Not only did these alumnae actively engage with the concert, but they were also always the loudest to cheer for their fellow Sirens. The presence of the alumnae really went to show the strength of the bonds shared by the ladies in this a cappella group.

For those who were unable to attend the live show, the contents of the entire concert can be found online on the JHU Sirens YouTube channel. The YouTube channel is also filled with videos from previous concerts and is most definitely worth checking out.