The second annual Saxons’ Got Talent Show, run by Brian Kauffman, the director of theater, was planned to take place on November 10, 2023. However, it has now been postponed due to the birth of Kauffman’s child. There is not a new date announced currently, but the show still has many performances planned by Langley students. Participants can be in groups or perform individually.

Freshmen Liv Harsh and Sasha Weiss plan to compete together in the show. They plan to perform the song “Reckless” by Madison Beer.

“We chose the act last second, and I reached out to my best friend, Sasha, because she is amazing at playing the cello to accompany me,” Harsh said.

The two have prior experience with music. Both of them have participated in school musical electives since elementary school.

“I’ve been singing karaoke for people and used to do chorus until middle school,” Harsh said. “Sasha has been playing the cello since she was six, and has participated in orchestra for a long time whilst doing private cello lessons from an instructor on top of that.”

The performance for the tryouts went differently than they had expected. Nevertheless, they have been perfecting their act since then.

“We actually felt very different about our tryout than the people watching,” Harsh said. “We noticed tons of our mistakes, but we have been practicing until [the show] got rescheduled. We took videos of us to hear our sound and we both think we’re at least five times better than we were auditioning.”

One of the largest groups in the show includes four students: seniors Alina He-Cheng and Fiona Lin,  junior Peter Hanip, and sophomore Gray Czarnecki. 

“We chose to play ‘Plug In Baby’ by Muse because we wanted to play a fun song the audience could enjoy,” Czarnecki said.

Although the members of the group know each other, they have not performed music in front of an audience together. Some of them did not have experience with instruments before preparing for the show.

“We’re all friends outside of this band, but we’ve never worked together on music before. In all honesty, it’s a very patchwork group,” He-Cheng said. “Half of us aren’t experienced at all in our instruments, whilst the other half has been trained, but has never performed in a setting such as this.”

Due to the group not having much experience, they were apprehensive about the audition performance.

“We were a bit nervous during the auditions because it was our first time playing in front of an audience, but it went really well,” said Czarnecki. “We’ve only been working together for around a month, but we’ve been practicing hard to make our act fantastic.”

The group emphasized the fact that, in the end, the talent show is for enjoyment.

“There’s a competitive aspect to talent shows, of course, but the main purpose of it is to display an array of student talent and just enjoy performing your talents as a whole,” He-Cheng said. “It’s all in good spirit, so don’t stress too much!”

Junior Shailja Patel is another competitor in the show, and will be singing the song “Sundar Sujan” by Jazim Sharma while playing the sitar.

“I’ve learned three performing arts: sitar, kathak dance, and singing,” Patel said.  “Sitar is what I’ve been doing the longest, and singing is the reason why I do all three performing arts. I’m really good at that, so I decided that I’d like to incorporate both by [blending] my singing and composition [with] the sitar.”

The audition performance went better than she had expected. The microphones on stage were able to enhance the sounds of the sitar.

“I liked the sound system,” said Patel. “Usually when I perform, the sound of the instrument isn’t captured very well in the microphone, but the mics were amazing.”

Patel recommends competing with an act that the performer truly has a passion for.

“Do the act that’s your thing,” said Patel. “Don’t do it because you want to win [the competition], or you want to have a certain impression; do it because that’s your unique quality that defines you in life.”