Engineers in Concert leaves us wanting more

Saturday evening’s Encore Engineers in Concert was very relaxing and amazingly entertaining. The variety of the acts by the students and faculty of Rose-Hulman were diverse and interesting; we were impressed at the range of abilities of our colleagues and classmates. The acts ranged from juggling, to dancing, to singing.

One of the performances of the evening that we both really enjoyed was the duet by professors Julia Williams and Tom Adams. They performed a version of Christopher Cross’ “Sailing,” and Adams did an excellent job at his guitar solo. Williams’ vocals were exceptional and very relaxing.

Jenn Cringoli’s dance solo performance was also very moving. She danced to “Broken” by Lindsey Hahn and her movements flowed with the lyrics and brought out feelings of remorse that enhanced the overall performance. The emotion on Cringoli’s face and the ending position when she finished off the song was just amazing and was almost enough to bring the audience to tears.

Professor J.P. Mellor dazzled with his bagpipe performance - in a kilt! He offered a five-ish minute PowerPoint presentation on bagpipes - including their structure and origins - which was pretty cool, if odd. It lent a suddenly academic air to the event, although not overly so.

We were both trapped giggling rather helplessly by the Rose-Hulman Chorus’s presentation of “Manly Men” and “The Argument.” We, however, are major suckers for groups of people singing harmoniously. The humor was merely an added bonus.

Overall, the entire concert was very exceptional. We enjoyed listening to all the performances; some, for example the Rose-Hulman String Ensemble version of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” were relaxing enough that you could fall into your own peaceful little world while listening.