Classic rockers Foreigner gives the Van Horn High School choir one heck of an opportunity

Foreigner. // image courtesy the artist

Classic rock legends Foreigner is performing their Historic Farewell Tour in Kansas City tonight at the Starlight Theatre. This will be the band’s penultimate summer tour, with Foreigner disbanding at the end of 2024.

When this tour is over, it will also mark the 20th anniversary of bassist Jeff Pilson’s time in Foreigner. When he joined, he didn’t necessarily think he’d be with them at the end, but after a couple of years, Pilson knew he was in for the long haul.

“And now, the beginning of that final run—so cool,” says Pilson. It’s a bittersweet ending, of course, as he feels the band is playing, singing, and performing at its peak. “The audiences have been amazing, and we all love one another dearly. Gonna miss everyone a lot, but less travel sounds good—that part, I like!”

Before all that, though, the band stops at Starlight on Tuesday, July 18, and the performance will feature what’s become a tradition for Foreigner performances over the years. The band frequently has a local choir perform as part of their show, and in the past, choirs have taken to the stage with the band to perform songs like “I Want to Know What Love Is.”

On the Kansas City stop of the Historic Farewell Tour, Independence’s Van Horn High School Choir opens the show with an acapella set of various classic rock songs. In addition to the exposure, the Van Horn High School choir will receive a Bose L1 Pro16 sound system donated by Foreigner and Bose Sound Systems. The original idea came from Foreigner’s manager Phil Carson, and it’s been a huge win for all involved, says Pilson.

“We started working with local choirs several years ago through our connection with the Grammy Foundation,” Pilson says via email. “It gives us such pleasure to see the looks on their faces and to feel all the enthusiasm on stage—it’s wonderful. Plus, they sell CDs at the show for us, and they get a huge donation. It’s a fabulous situation.”

The opportunity for the Van Horn High School choir came about when a member of the choir’s dedicated parent group sent a link for a contest sponsored by KC102 to choir director Andrew Fansher.

“They advertised that any high school group, all you would have to do is send in a two-minute recording of your choirs singing a Foreigner song,” Fansher says. “I brought it to my kids. And they, they were like, ‘Who is that?’”

After a moment when the choir director suddenly felt very old, he played the choir some Foreigner, as well as some music from the opening act Loverboy; the choir was down. From never having heard the track to having it fully memorized and performance-ready, they learned “Cold As Ice” in two weeks and then sent in their clip.

“The kids met the task,” says Fansher. “I was really proud of them, and they sang the crap out of it, and we ended up winning.”

Given that Starlight is a pretty big venue hosting a pretty notable tour, it’s been interesting explaining to a bunch of teenagers what exactly this opportunity means.

“I still don’t think they’ll get the gravity of it until we walk on that stage, which is perfect because that’s when all that performance adrenaline starts pumping, and it makes them a lot better,” Fansher says. “They’ve all at least been to Starlight, and they’ve seen the venue, but just looking at it from the other perspective of being on stage is gonna be kind of eye-opening for them.”

For those who get to the show early, they’ll be treated to performances of “Rosanna” by Toto and the Eagles’ “Seven Bridges Road,” among others. It’s a little different than what the choir normally does but not completely out of their wheelhouse, explains Fansher.

“In a normal year, we’re learning the classical music style,” the choir director says. “I’ll throw in a classical arrangement of a pop piece, but then I normally save that for our last concert. We do all pop pieces for the end.”

They’re gonna look so good. // photo credit facebook.com/kc102radio

This has been fully extracurricular, for the record. All of these kids are out of school for the summer and, in at least one case, have actually graduated, but that’s actually made things faster than they might be during the academic year.

“They knocked out ‘Seven Bridges Road’ in that first rehearsal,” says Fansher. “I said, ‘Oh, goodness. This is gonna be awesome. I can’t even get you to learn music that fast during the school year,’ and they’re like, ‘Well, you know, we have other classes.’”

As we laugh at that, Fansher quickly thanks the parents who helped make this opportunity possible.

“I’m lucky to have dedicated parents to send me things like that and really work hard,” Fansher says appreciatively. “The same parent is coordinating shirts for the kids to wear at the performance. I get to focus on teaching, and I can let some other folks delegate that task to some other people, and they’ll handle that for me.”

Foreigner, along with Loverboy and the Van Horn High School choir, performs at Starlight on Tuesday, July 18. Details on that show here.