Uniondale High School Show Choir feels at home with Foreigner at Tilles Center

It will feel like the third time when a Uniondale High School choir and a legendary stalwart of classic rock take the stage Friday during a benefit concert in Brookville.

The Uniondale High School Show Choir will back Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Foreigner on one of the band's biggest hits, "I Want To Know What Love Is," part of a fundraiser for a stage production next year of a new musical, "Feels Like The First Time."

Proceeds from the band’s performance Friday — an unplugged set at Tilles Center for the Performing Arts at Long Island University — will fund the musical, packed with more than a dozen Foreigner hits and currently in development between the band, LIU and the Tilles Center.

It will be the third time the choir, dubbed "Rhythm of the Knight," and Foreigner perform the 41-year-old ballad. They played together at Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater in 2014 and again in 2017.

Last October, the choir performed with Barry Manilow at Radio City Music Hall.

"It’s something that’s very memorable and to experience something like that again with another band is just amazing," said Varsha Ramrookum, 17, a senior at Uniondale High on Wednesday of singing with Manilow. "I’m definitely excited to get back up on a stage in front of so many people and put smiles on people in the audience."

In a warm, wood-planked chorus classroom Wednesday, the second day of the school year, Ramrookum and about 20 other choir members snapped their fingers and clapped as they sang their parts and pivoted from left to right in sync with a recording of the chart-topping song they'll perform Friday in the 2,000-plus seat auditorium.

The Uniondale show choir, with its moniker a tip of the cap to the school’s Knight mascot, started capturing national attention shortly after director Lynnette Carr-Hicks founded the group in 2010. In 2018 and 2024, the choir was named grand champion at the FAME Show Choir National Championship in Orlando, Florida.

Foreigner's original lead singer, Lou Gramm, first noticed the choir's performing chops in 2017 when he joined the band's then-lineup at Jones Beach for an encore. On Wednesday, Gramm described the show in a phone interview with Newsday as "awesome."

"I remember, for sure, that choir being fantastic," Gramm, 75, said. "It’s obviously all new kids, but the sensation is the same. We like to use different choirs, but when you find a good choir, or a school that represents a good choir, you go back to them."

Among other notable performances are the Uniondale choir's three appearances on NBC’s "Today" and backing Kenny Rogers at NYCB Theatre in Westbury in 2016.  

Carr-Hicks said she may be "even more excited" than her students for Friday's performance, as this marks her third time prepping Uniondale high schoolers for a Foreigner show. The band routinely holds contests for local high school choirs to join them for performances of their hit that topped the Billboard Hot 100 as well as charts in Australia, Canada and the U.K.

"For them to ask us to come back again is pretty amazing," said Carr-Hicks, who sang "I Want To Know What Love Is" when she was a high school choir student. "They see that we have really put our heart and soul into the song."

This fall, LIU and the Tilles Center will host a development workshop for "Feels Like The First Time" to "get the show on its feet" before it premieres April 17 at the university’s Little Theatre, said Tom Dunn, dean of the school's College of Art and Design and the performing arts center’s executive and artistic director. The university recruited Adam Pascal, an original star of "Rent" on Broadway, as its first-ever artist-in-residence and director of the Foreigner musical.

Gramm, who will host Friday’s event and join the band for at least one song during the acoustic set, said "so far, we like what we’ve seen" of the musical. Luis Maldonado, who joined the band in 2021, will take on lead vocal duties for most of the set.

Gramm said a musical rooted in Foreigner’s music will help "the longevity of the songs," many of which he co-wrote with founding member Mick Jones.

"It’s something that hasn’t been explored all that much," he added of musicals rooted in a single rock artist. "We just felt that if it’s done right it can be very classy."