Toscanini College held its annual Tosc-A-Riginal night on Feb. 10 in the Tabler Blackbox Theater to celebrate talent, creativity and community among ACH poets, singers and songwriters.

A jumbled symphony of guitars, drums, violins and voices filled the Tabler Blackbox as artists prepared to perform their original works. Attendees trickled in, greeted by the symphony and an excited “Welcome! Please sign in.” by the event’s coordinators.

Every year the Toscanini staff puts this event together to showcase the creative talents the ACH community has. This year, due to popular demand, the event focused more on music than poetry, but the poetic words were not forgotten. Two poets still went up to captivate the audience.

Performers played everything from the ukulele to the violin and paired instruments with their original words.

“It’s so exciting to listen to all the super cool and original sounds,” Lin Xue, a sophomore linguistics major, said.

Some of the performers introduced songs that were brand new and had never been performed, like Francis Matos, who went on stage with a guitar and smile saying, “I’ve never played this one before so let’s see how this goes.” That turned out to be a theme of the night as the relaxed environment allowed performers to mess up, start over and speak their mind.

“This is my life,” Matos, a sophomore music major, said. “I perform. I wanna perform.”

Over the course of the night, no less than 10 performers went up and showcased their hard work and their hearts. Some songs focused on love, others on heartache and one on the frustrating power of cancer. One performer got so into his music that hair from his violin’s bow sprung free.

For many artists this was not their first time performing. Like Hearts of Opus who performed at Wolfie’s Showcase or Gui Williams whose song, “Whenever You Want,” is now on Spotify and iTunes.

“Everyone gets together over a common interest and it’s really nice when people come out to support each other especially with something as raw and vulnerable as singing and songwriting,”  Madelyne Pena, a junior psychology major who is a member of Hearts of Opus and helped coordinate the event, said.

The night came to an end with a final performance by Gui Williams. Alone on stage with a white guitar, he sang and pulled the audience in too. 

With the audience clapping to the rhythm and harmonizing with the artists, the performers and those watching joined together to finish out a night of talent and creativity. The yearly tradition lives on.