Last Wednesday, the seats in Harrison Auditorium were filled with students in attendance for the “Art and Soul” concert presented by the Student Union Advisory Board (SUAB).

Students were given free admission in exchange for canned foods and water to be donated to Haiti.

The event featured fellow Aggies, local artists from the Greensboro area and the main attraction of the evening, headliner Melanie Fiona. 

The first act to perform was Aggie alum, Santos accompanied by his guitar. 

He performed two songs, one of that was about the meaning of love, which mentioned to the couples in the audience to learn to love.

The next performers were fellow Aggies who were introduced as “Candace and Dominique”.

The crowd reacted in cheering as Candace Thompson sang and Dominique added her poetic flair to the performance.

“I really enjoyed Candace and Dominique’s performance,” said sophomore Renee Smith. “Candace has a great voice and I like how they intertwined poetry and singing.”

The duo performed recording duo Floetry’s song, “Say Yes.”  Thompson’s performance really got the attention of the audience as she sang a few high notes of the song.

The last act before Fiona was another Aggie, Lawrence Locke. He performed a few songs and also did a little spoken word.

Audience members had mixed feelings about the opening acts.

Timothy Lane said, “The opening acts were ok, they were not bad at all.”

However, junior music major Tristan Cooper said, “I was not into the opening acts at all, the opening acts really made me want to leave early, they didn’t entertain me at all.”

Fiona interacted with the crowd before beginning her performance.

She began to perform songs from her album. Fiona seemed very excited as she continued to perform one of her songs, “Give It To Me Right.” 

She teased the audience as she swayed her hips and danced along with her background singers.

Fiona, continued to sing more of her songs, but in the middle of her set, she decided to play a game with the crowd.

She said she wanted to know if the crowd knew good music and began playing older songs to see if the crowd knew them.

The crowd participated by singing the songs with her.

Fiona said she was tired of singing other people’s songs and went on to perform her number one hit song, “It Kills Me.” The audience appeared to be awed by her performance.

Fiona walked off stage and continued singing while in the audience.

She also allowed members in the audience to display their talent. One female impressed her by rapping about Haiti and Fiona.

One audience member also beat boxed while she sang one of her songs.

The crowd cheered when her entire performance was over. Three lucky audience members were able to meet Melanie Fiona by answering questions about SUAB. 

Although Cooper didn’t care for the opening acts he did enjoy Fiona’s performance. “Melanie was really good…but the sound quality of the music was bad, but vocally she is good,” said Cooper.

Tracy Bell, a junior music major, said, “I thought her performance overall was pretty good, she was good with the crowd.” Bell said Fiona did a good job of reading what the audience wanted to hear from her.

“At the beginning nobody was really familiar with her new songs that were on her CD, but she actually adapted to the situation by bringing out songs that people actually knew and then kind of tweaked her song in there. But overall I thought it was good,” said Bell. 

• Makailah Fennell