Great Gig Shines Spotlight on “The Stranger”
Everyone in this year’s Great Gig salute to Billy Joel’s seminal pop-rock album, “The Stranger," brought something special to the Strayer stage.
Great gig first-timer Johelis Peralta ’29 particularly enjoyed a moment when she nailed the iconic saxophone solo in “Just the Way You Are.”
“I was extremely nervous about the solo parts as I hadn't been playing the instrument for that long and wasn't good at improvising when I needed to,” explained Peralta, who said the experience was “a nice introduction to Billy Joel’s music.”
She and 55 middle and upper school students rocked out last weekend with what director Gilles Pugatch called “epic” performances from members of Dobbs 16, 1877: Band Edition, Contemporary Ensemble, Jazz Band and the 8th Greaters. Great Gig is the annual Department of Performing Arts event and interdisciplinary project where students collaborate to recreate a music album in its entirety through a live performance.
Pugatch noted, “There is a particular kind of courage required to ask, mid-song, mid-adolescence, mid-anything: Which version of myself is showing up right now, and why? Billy Joel posed that question on ‘The Stranger’ in 1977, and it has not aged a day.”
He added, “The album is a study in the masks we wear — not as deception, but as survival, as navigation, as the basic grammar of social life. DoPA’s students have been living inside this material, tracing the seams between self and performance with the rigor of philosophers and the instincts of musicians. The result is something rarer than a ‘covers’ show: it is an act of genuine inquiry, staged and amplified.”
Dobbs 16 member Stella Ervi ’27 appreciated the collaboration among the various musicians and performers. “My favorite song was ‘Everybody Has a Dream’ because that's the one song that everybody gets to go on stage and come together to sing about how everyone has a dream, which I think is very true in this day and age.”
Pugatch said, “Sonically, ‘The Stranger’ represents a high-water mark of the smart-rock era — lush, meticulously voiced, deceptively complex beneath its commercial surface. The arrangements demand everything: dynamic range, harmonic awareness, theatrical timing. DoPA's musicians have met that demand.”
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