What they've been waiting… and waiting… and waiting for.
 
Taking the stage for the first time in over two years, the Grand Canyon University Club A Cappella group dazzled the crowd Tuesday night with their 2022 GCU Spring Showcase at Thunderground on the GCU campus. It was a crowning achievement for a team that rebuilt itself after a yearlong COVID-19 shutdown last year, and a change at the top right before the 2021 fall semester began.
 
"After several months of buildup, it was amazing to have a showcase," said Lopes' Student Coach Jackie Paul, who – along with fellow first-year member Molly Sentell – resurrected the program in late September, then took over as solo student coach in December. "I am so beyond thankful we got to have a live performance, since this has been a limited thing because of COVID."
 
An intimate crowd had barely gotten comfortable in their seats when the group broke into Years and Years' "If You're Over Me", led by senior member Parker Randolph, who was one of the few remaining members from two years ago. That was followed by another returner, Alexis Viramontes, even going down off stage to the crowd to lead the group in the Gotye standard, "Somebody That I Used to Know." The first solo of the night came next, a poignant version of Olivia Rodrigo's "Driver's License" from GCU freshman Vanessa Ochoa.
 
Paul then pulled a chair and music stand on stage to perform her own acoustically enlightened spiritual, "Christ We Sing", before being joined by Lopes' student leader Savannah Robinson for a beautiful guitar-tinged duet of Christina Perri's "Jar Of Hearts".
 

The group then took the stage en masse to put an A Cappella spin on Linkin Park's "In the End", with freshman Nathan Hicks handling the late Chester Bennington's lead vocals. Five members of the group then took the audience back a few decades, adding precise harmonies to John Lennon's always-purposeful "Imagine".
 
The second solo of the night also brought out the second original composition, Randolph's "1%", before the group took the stage once more in unison to have Paul lead them in the Dua Lipa hit, "Levitating", to officially close the evening.
 

"If I could change anything, I definitely would've had a largest set list!" said Paul. "Due to only having seven of us perform, we weren't able to cover as much material, since we were all on our own part, but it was so fun to be up there with everyone."
 
With just days before many of the group members will take musical and song-related finals from GCU's College of Arts and Media, the Lopes' singers were more than exhilarated about using this as a "team final exam".
 
"The highlight was just the fact that we finally got to see everything come together after this year of hard work," said Paul. "I enjoyed how different each of our songs were. It was awesome to see how much our team has bonded. I've made some amazing friends through this group."

Interested in being a part of the future of GCU Club A Cappella? Email the coach here.