Ryan Flynn — General Assignment Reporter
(S)ecrets, a student-run small ensemble group at SCSU, will perform two shows on April 30 during Student Appreciation Day. The first will be out in the academic quad at 1 p.m., with the second to take place at Garner Recital Hall at 7:30 p.m. Both are free to the public.
“The whole idea was to get more of the campus involved this time around,” vocalist Andrew Pinto said. “So we have two performances in the same day. We have one more informal performance out in the quad so everyone can just get involved and just; if they want to just hang out and watch us perform for a while, that’s cool, and if they don’t they can just leave.”
Pinto described the second performance at Garner as more formal, with parents and faculty likely to be in attendance.
“It gives people a chance to see us,” Pinto said of performing twice. “If they can’t see us during the day they can see us at night; if they can’t see us at night they can come see us during the day.”
(S)ecrets was created last Spring by Sebastian Smith, a music and studio art/graphic design double major.
“I just wanted to start a more pop music-oriented ensemble that wasn’t necessarily run by a faculty member. So, it was like 100 percent student run,” Smith said. “We weren’t playing things that were already made up; we were coming up with our own material. So, I approached a few friends and they approached their friends and that’s kind of how we started.”
Along with Smith and Pinto, the (S)ecrets ensemble consists of Jahkeem Ohizep, John Joaquim, Josh Smith, Kristy Dillon, Shane O’Brien and Phoebe Bustos.
Pinto described the band’s sound as being just like “radio pop” and referred to their catchy hooks and choruses as well as the inclusion of some rap.
According to Smith, the group, which was formerly known as Sebastian’s Secret Ensemble, tries to get each member involved in each song somehow.
For the most part, though, the vocalists rotate in and out of the lineup depending on which song they are performing.
Smith said that he hopes the earlier informal show might positively affect turnout to the later performance.
“If we just put posters up, you know: ‘7:30, Garner, April 30;’ not that many people necessarily are going to show up.
But if people hear us; even if they just hear the tail-end of our afternoon performance and they like it, they might actually come to the evening one.”
(S)ecrets looks to release their debut album “On the DL” in the near future.
Along with being able to hold onto this album as a keepsake of what they’ve accomplished, the ensemble members hope that their music can also help promote the on-campus studio in the Engleman Hall basement that very few seem to know about.
“You have a kid that plays guitar and he wants to lay down a song; he’s doing it on his computer in his dorm room and he doesn’t realize that there’s a professional quality studio in the basement of Engleman that no one knows about because you can’t see into it,” Pinto said. “So, this album and this group is kind of a way to just be like ‘Hey, if you like how we sound and you like how our album sounds, we did that here.’”
Tracks from ‘On the DL’ will hopefully be available on iTunes on the day of the show, according to Smith and Pinto.
