ENMU's POPS concert makes return

PORTALES — The sounds of the 53rd annual Eastern New Mexico University POPS Concert will no doubt be full of welcome sights and sounds for an audience that went without the dinner concert last year.

But the people who organize it might need it just as much as the 250 audience members, if not more.

“For a musician, it’s all about live performance,” ENMU Director of Music Dustin Seifert said. “While we were able to maintain a connection and relationship with our students, there’s nothing like live performance.”

The concert, last held in person in 2019, is scheduled for 7 p.m. Nov. 20 at the university’s Campus Union Building. Tickets are $40 apiece, or $320 for a table of eight, with a few dozen tickets still available.

The concert is the lone fundraiser for the University Friends of Music, which receives other funding from memberships and individual donations. The organization provides various benefits for ENMU music students, including scholarships.

“We feel like we’re lunatics when it’s time for POPS,” board member Janelle Zamie said. “We have to start thinking about menus, dealing with (ticket requests), all of the stuff. But to get back to it (is important because) I’m so proud of these kids. They are so talented, they are so gifted and they are so nice. They deserve everything we can do for them.”

Wayne Anderson, president of the Friends of Music board of directors, said the university’s Swanee Singers and Wind Symphony will intersperse singing with band tunes and incorporate songs from the James Bond film series. A solo clarinet performance from assistant professor Pamela Shuler is also on the program. A “name that tune” contest will also be part of the evening festivities, with the winner directing “Stars and Stripes Forever” before a final medley in recognition of Veterans Day.

Freshman Morgyn Gallegos, a member of the Swanee Singers, said it has been a joy to get back to performing after losing the last half of her junior year and essentially her entire senior year of high school performances to the pandemic.

“I missed it so, so much,” said Gallegos, who attended Centennial High in Las Cruces. “I was pretty much lost without it. I didn’t know what to do. My extremely busy life had suddenly become nothing.”

Gallegos admitted she considered changing her major, but in her newly-found free time realized music was what she loved and what she wanted to do.

The Swanee Singers will perform four pieces from different musicals, along with an original mashup they made of three pop music songs.

“I haven’t really gotten an opportunity like this,” Gallegos said of the POPS concert. “It’s nice to have the opportunity to perform music in different settings.”

Ticket requests can be mailed to Kathleen Salter/POPS 2021, 112 Texas Dr., Portales, NM 88130 with a name, mailing address, phone number, email address, vegetarian meal requests if necessary and a check or money order to the University Friends of Music covering the total number of tickets requested. Ticket requests must be received by Friday for organizers to provide Sodexo with a final meal count.

Information: Salter, 575-359-0145.