Glee Club at UAA offers a creative and team-oriented outlet for its members. The club performs musical pieces with some dance elements. Glee Club performs acapella with live accompaniment provided by the members themselves. The club is on their twenty-seventh season. In an interview with one of Glee Club’s members, sophomore Alex Lim, she described her experience in the club and how it operates.
Glee Club finds or makes arrangements for songs in their program. The songs are chosen based on the interests of the club’s members and do not have to follow a theme. However, a few seasons ago, the club performed emo songs by bands including My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco.
Glee Club has cultivated a close-knit group amongst its members. “It’s kind of like a family. You get really close to people really fast, because you see each other for two hours and a half on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And a lot of us stay longer because we like being around each other,” Lim said.
They always perform pieces in groups, with exception of “solo swan” songs when a member is leaving the club. The performances range across genres — from emo to pop and kpop songs — as well as emotionally from comedic to somber performances.
Glee Club has a show at the end of each semester, held in the Fine Arts Building. This can increase stress experienced by its members during finals.
“A lot of stuff goes on, it is a very stressful club … we are on a timeline to make a show by the end of the semester, and it’s kind of hard to balance that with school. But the fact that there’s a bunch of people there who are going through the exact same thing, it's like a family,” Lim said.
Glee Club prepares all semester for their show. “Before we do a show, we have tech week, which is essentially running the show over, and over and over again. So by the time people see the finished product it's literally like our seventh time of the week,” Lim said.
“You go to Glee Club and you kind of realize that like, we have like nursing majors, we have all types of majors. That’s like the only thing that brings us together … they have some type of connection to music,” Lim said.
Additionally, Lim said the Fox series “Glee” has not been her experience with the Glee Club on campus. Though, she said the members frequently reference the movie “Pitch Perfect.”
Glee Club’s performances and live streams of shows can be found on the club’s YouTube channel. For updates on auditions and upcoming shows, go to the club’s Instagram.