By Michael Richter

We also sat down for a civilized conversation with senior Sirens Katia Cardenas, Sarah Halloran, and Nelli Thomas, whose concert will be held in the music hall on May 4, 8:00p.m.
I heard each of you picked a song for your upcoming concert. What were each of your choices?

SH: Seniors always get a solo. Nelli, you picked yours first so you should go first.

NT: Yeah, I picked “Two Weeks” by Grizzly Bear because it has excellent backup vocals that are rally heavenly and high, and we have a lot of good voices for that. Katia picked “Bad Romance.”

KC: (singing) I may or may not be Lady Gaga, that’s the question of the day, with some kids.

NT: There’s going to be dancing. There will be dancing.

SH: And I picked mine about a week ago, and it’s going to be “Shop Around” by Smokey Robinson because I like a sweet soul jam.

KC: And a sweet soul jam it is.

What’s the best reaction you’ve ever gotten from a singing valentine?

NT: We’ve gotten shut out of the room several times, once locked in our face. What’s his name?

SH: Patrick Schmidt, he actually locked us out of my class.

NT: I feel like someone cried once.

KC: We sang “Steal my Kisses” to the ladies in the registrar’s office one year and they all cried.

SH: The dining hall people were also really cute. Most of the time people just turn purple.

Are there any tensions between the various a capella groups on campus?

KC: There have been at one time or another.

SH: Well, our fraternal group is the trads. We have a very brotherly sisterly relationship with the trads.

KC: In the past there was a Sirens Trads kind of bias against the Scotch Tapers because they originated kind of Off Kilter.

SH: I would say there’s nothing but love between the Sirens and Tapers and Trads at this point.

NT: They’re great.

Can you give me any good sirens anecdotes?

SH: .One that can go in the paper. We used to do a lot of drinking.

NT: There’s got to be a better Sirens anecdote.

KC: This semester has been really intense, so we haven’t had a lot of notable times.

Tell me about your efforts for social justice.

SH: We’re doing more stuff on campus. Before I feel we used to be called on campus for things like student org fairs.

KC: “we could use a little entertainment”

SH: We did facilities dinner. We used to do relay for life. We also went to the Avanti Center for girls and hung out with them for an evening which was really cool. One of our seniors, Emily Lesnick, works there every week. We also did a human rights arts exhibit. We’re getting invited to do more stuff. We’re all socially minded folks.

KC: I think this semester we’ve also started to rethink our role on campus as a group of women only, and what that means, without trying to be super feminist about it.

SH: We’re invited to things because we’re a roaming group of women.

NT: We need to represent.

What would you say to someone to convince them to go to your concert?

SH: Good question.

KC: How long is this building open?

SH: I mean there’s a lot of stuff going on at the end of the year.

NT: Titties.

SH: Well number one, yeah. Titties and other related lady parts.

KC: All together on stage for one night.

SH: I’d say we put on a pretty fun show. And you’ll see people who you see walking around campus who you had no idea had the biggest voice in the world.

NT: We have a really great set list.

SH: You’ll always hear a few songs you know re-interpreted.

KC: We’re mashing up, if you like mash-ups. Only for a short time.

NT: You know, like Girl Talk does.

KC: Going into this show, we realized making up our set list, we have a number of songs that select audiences are going to know, but not everyone’s going to know. It’s going to be a really great venue to hear some really awesome kind of undergroundish music, as well as some newer hits.