Mauricio Salazar attended his first rock concert on Saturday, Oct. 13. His favorite part of the show was when he and his friends got to join the band on stage.
“Not a lot of people can say, ‘At my very first concert, I got to perform,’” Salazar said.
The sophomore at Southeastern Oklahoma State University (SOSU) is a member of the Chorvettes, SOSU’s show choir. The group was invited to join the venerable rock bank Foreigner on its Farewell Tour stop in the Choctaw Casino and Resort’s Grand Theater.
The college group performed the chorus of the band’s 1984 numberone hit, “I Want to Know What Love Is.”
Salazar said he is familiar with the band’s work because his mother is a classic rock fan and often plays Foreigner’s music. He said she was the first person he called when the Chorvettes’ director, Deborah Clements, told the group they had been invited to perform.
“She literally had to stop driving; she was freaking out with me,” he said.
Salazar said the chance to perform with a world-renowned musical act was a major high point of his education. Salazar’s fellow Chorvette, SOSU junior Audrey Dorn, agreed.
“It was really a breathtaking experience; I was in shock,” Dorn said. “It’s something I’ve never experienced before, and it was really fun to be on stage with them.”
The band has made it a tradition to invite local choirs and musical ensembles to sing with them. This includes at least seven shows in Texoma over the years. Of those seven dates, five have involved groups under the direction of SOSU adjunct professor and Chorvettes director Deborah Clements.
Clements was first contacted in 2016 when she was the choir teacher at Durant High School. She said her response to being invited to perform was immediate.
“Of course, we were definitely interested,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
This month’s performance was the first for the Chorvettes. In addition to “I Want to Know What Love Is,” the Chorvettes were asked to sing an a cappella set of classic rock songs before Foreigner took the stage.
“We chose to sing portions of Seven Bridges Road, Listen to the Music, Carry on Wayward Son, and Black Water,” Clements said.
She said the opportunity to perform with professional musicians is invaluable and also a lot of fun.
According to Clements, Foreigner has been inviting local musical groups and ensembles to perform with them for the past 17 years. In addition to giving the local musicians exposure they may not receive elsewhere, the group often makes a financial contribution to their programs. Foreigner guitarist and founding member Mick Jones said the band sees the work as vital to equipping young artists.
“As far as I’m concerned, music is not only the most powerful form of communication between the peoples of the world, it provides a gateway that opens up a fantastic new dimension of feeling and creativity. Anything we can do to provide our young ones with the tools to express themselves through music is our goal in this partnership,” Jones wrote in a statement to the Durant Democrat.
