Episode Details

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It was a music video made from the heart and souls of some very talented West Jordan High School students under the direction of choir teacher Keith Evans.

On this special 200th edition of the Supercast, meet members of the West Jordan High pop group Encore and find out why popular music artist Jason Mraz reached out to them with a message the students will likely remember for a lifetime.

We're here at West Jordan High School in the choir room with choir director Keith Evans and with members of the Pop Vocal Ensemble Encore. Now I've seen your work over the years as people have enthusiastically emailed me the videos that you've put together out on the salt flats if I'm not mistaken. Those are amazing videos, high production quality. At first, you're taken by the scenery, but you're very quickly mesmerized by the vocal performance, it's really incredible. I always look forward to that. People generally know that I'm a music fan, so I always get it from various sources. They always send me your video each year, which is really cool for me. And I'm really excited to finally get to talk with some of you about it. So we're gonna talk with the director here first and tell me a little bit about Encore’s history and purpose.

Keith Evans:
Yeah, so when I took the job from my predecessor, Kelly DeHaan, he's a very well-known--

Anthony Godfrey:
You took the job from your predecessor. You wrestled him to the ground and said, “It's over, I'm taking over.”

Keith Evans:
As a matter of fact, he texted me and said, “Hey, I'm moving high schools, would you like to throw your hat in the ring to be the replacement?” And I thank him forever more for that text. But Kelly is well known in the community as very classically trained. I am not. My background is pop music. I sang with a pop group at BYU as a student, and I've mostly worked in that realm. And so when I took this job, I said, “I can't be another Kelly DeHaan, and I shouldn't try to be. I’m going to be me.” And so I took one of his one of the choir ensembles which was called Junior Madrigals and I said we're gonna do what I know instead and we turned it into Encore which is a pop a cappella ensemble. It's small. There are 11-12, there have been as many as 16 members of the group.

Anthony Godfrey:
You don’t combine it into Pop-a-Pella or something?

Keith Evans:
No other groups have done that before and it's a little cringe. But we came up with the name Encore and we said what we're gonna do is what I know, and it's covers and occasionally original music of contemporary music. I feel like there's a lot of contemporary music that purists kind of turn their nose up to and ignore.

Anthony Godfrey:
Thank you.

Keith Evans:
For whatever reason.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yes, it gets overlooked.

Keith Evans:
It does. People say, well, you know, it wasn't written 400 years ago by a person in a powdery wig so why should we care?

Anthony Godfrey:
Right.

Keith Evans:
And I think that there's a lot of great music that gets missed because of that. And so Encore focuses on this newer stuff, and frankly, that's one thing that gets the kids so excited is they're able to sing stuff that, "Oh, I listened to that guy already in the car. That person's on my playlist," or wha