Foreigner knows what love is.
And the Ancora Choir from Oak Lawn Community High School now does, too, after it teamed up with the rock band for its biggest hit.
Last Saturday night, Aug. 24, at Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre in Tinley Park, 25 students backed the band up singing “I Want to Know What Love Is,” a chart-topping song for Foreigner in 1984.
The choir was selected after sending a video audition to a classic rock radio station for the honor.
Students Ethan Zumhagen and Gianna Golden, both 16, were born long after Foreigner first hit it big.
But the juniors who live in Oak Lawn are thrilled they were part of a rock concert.
“We hadn’t performed in front of that many people before. And being able to perform with a very well-known and popular band is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was amazing,” Golden said a few days after the experience.
“When we found out we were going, we were excited to participate in this,” Golden added.
Any pre-show jitters vanished when the choir walked onstage, she said.
Given the bright lights focused on the stage, it was difficult to see fans’ faces beyond the first row, Zumhagen said.
“It was really, really cool,” Zumhagen said of the experience.
Making it even cooler was how fans pointed lights on their phones at the stage during the romantic song.
“It was weird because your entire view was just a wall of lights,” Zumhagen said.
The choir did not rehearse with Foreigner before the show, but the Oak Lawn singers knew the song inside out.
“Our high school put a musical last year, ‘Rock of Ages,’ which has a ton of Foreigner music in it,” Zumhagen said.
Choir director Samantha Elliott agreed: “I told them ‘you guys already know the song’.”
“We spent the majority of the year working on ‘80’s pop music,” she said. “I didn’t expect them to listen to Foreigner on their own. But because we did the musical, they knew all the songs.”
“It wasn’t until we got to the concert that they realized how special this was,” Elliott said.
As Zumhagen noted, “It was a one-shot deal. It was just showing up and doing it right.”
The choir left the stage to applause from the audience and the band, Elliott said.
Much like Zumhagen and Golden, Elliott was still thrilled days later.
“Super cool. I’ve been hyping about it. It’s very special,” Elliott said.
Foreigner was second of three bands – John Waite opened and Styx closed – to perform that night, so the choir could not linger.
They walked onto the stage, sang and left.
The choir’s appearance on stage originated in spring when two colleagues – TJ Kahriman and Tim Krupa – told Elliott that WDRV (97.1 FM) was running a contest for a choir to perform with Foreigner.
She gathered the choir, rehearsed the song, recorded a video audition of the choir singing “I Want to Know What Love Is” and sent it to the radio station.
A few weeks later, she learned from WDRV that the Ancora Choir was chosen to perform.
The song, released 40 years ago, became one of Foreigner’s biggest hits, the band’s only song to top the charts.
While the current edition of Foreigner on tour has no original members, the band’s music lives on.
Elliott, 35, is familiar with Foreigner through her parents. “I had a very musical background growing up,” she said.
Elliott enjoyed how Kelly Hansen, lead singer since 2005, warmly welcomed the choir which was dressed in the proper rock ‘n’ roll attire.
Juan Lopez, whose son Angel is in the choir, designed a black T-shirt that has the choir logo on the front and a Spartan singing into a mic on the back, along with the Foreigner logo.
After the students walked out single file onto the stage and stood near the drums, behind Hansen, Elliott soaked up the surroundings.
“I was, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is huge’,” she said of the outdoor theater.
Hansen, she said, congratulated the choir after the song and said “you guys did a great job.”
He then spoke about the importance of arts and music in the education of high school students, Elliott said.
“He spoke of how it can encourage and inspire you,” Elliott said. “It was very sweet.”
Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
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