This Friday, at 7:00 p.m. the Pierce Middle School and South jazz bands will be conducting their annual holiday themed concert, Yule Be Boppin’.

The concert has been a tradition at south for quite a while, according to Chris Takis, the jazz band instructor from both Pierce and South.

“It (Yule Be Boppin’) is several years old, I don’t know if it’s approaching a couple decades or not, but it’s been going on every year for quite a while and it’s just (when) the South jazz band has a holiday/Christmassy type program that we put together,” Takis said. “I know that since I’ve been here we’ve had the Pierce jazz band play as well because I teach at both schools.”

Josh Adams ‘17, a three year veteran of the musical, says that this concert is always really fun and looks forward to it.

“Playing the Christmas music you just really get the feel for it and it’s almost like a different type of jazz with the holiday feel to it,” Adams said.

The attendees can expect to hear Everyone’s Waiting for the Man With the Bag, Rockin’ On Top of the World, Here Comes Santa Claus, Chili Pepper Christmas and several other holiday songs.

“The Pierce jazz band will play three Christmas songs and the South jazz band will play six of them. Most are pretty upbeat and happy; there’s one song where we’ll have a singer. It’s pretty fun music, it’s gonna be a pretty cool concert; it’s really like a festival,” Mikey Walsh ‘17 said.

Walsh also mentioned that Rockin’ On Top of The World is a song from the popular movie Polar Express and that Chili Pepper Christmas will feature variations of famous Christmas songs such as Sleigh Ride.

Takis believes preparations for the concert are going well, with some minor scheduling issues on rehearsal nights, but nothing problematic.

“I think it’s going pretty well. I had some time constraints on our normal rehearsal, like I had a concert at Pierce one of the nights we’d normally have a rehearsal. I had conferences on another night but everyone is practicing pretty hard and playing really well and it should be real fun,” Takis said.

Takis said that he really enjoys this concert in particular because the stakes are much lower compared to other performances.

“It’s one of our more fun-based programs that we do, like we have the Pops and Pastries, we have our performance at Central Michigan in February and we have Festival in April, so we have a lot of high stakes performances,” Takis said. “This one, I think, is just more of a fun one and everyone looks forward to it for that reason because it gets everyone in the spirit.”