Capella, Calvin’s top choir, has made a habit of setting high expectations for each of their performances. At their Late Night with Capella concert on Friday, they continued to exceed those expectations.

As the house lights dimmed in the sold-out CFAC auditorium, a quintet of Capella performers opened the night with a mashup of Swedish House Mafia’s 2012 hits “Save the World” and “Don’t You Worry Child.” The audience responded with enthusiastic applause, a trend that continued throughout the night.

Singing their way through a 19-song set, Capella performers covered everyone from Bruno Mars to Imagine Dragons.

Late Night with Capella is organized by students, making it markedly different from other choral concerts.

Junior David Evenhouse explained, “This concert is actually entirely student led: we do all our own song selection, we determine the order.”

Sophomore Amy Zinn added, “It’s fun for us to perform different repertoires that we’re not used to — to perform more upbeat pieces that are familiar to our audience.”

Evenhouse agreed.

“The entire point of the concert is to be much more engaging and relatable for the general student body — it’s just fun stuff that people can go and have fun with,” he said.

The combination of pop music with Capella’s vocal prowess makes Late Night with Capella a consistent hit among students.

“It’s cool that they sing popular music because it shows that choral music can reach all kinds of genres,” said first-year student Brooke Bonnema.

Between acts, Christian Becker and Lauren Boersma hosted the show in perfect style, wittily transitioning between acts and even bringing audience members onstage for a lyric trivia game (which left everyone struggling to remember the lyrics to Smash Mouth’s “All Star”).

Highlights of the night included Elena Buis and Daniel VandeBunte’s performance of “Chariot” (originally performed by Gavin DeGraw in 2003), Jared Haverdink and Kelvyn Koning’s performance of “Skinny Love” (Bon Iver, 2007), Troy Vander Hoek’s jazzed up performance of “Bad Romance” (Lady Gaga, 2009) and a tight performance of Justin Bieber’s “As Long as You Love Me” by Joshua Brink, Jared Haverdink and Peter Schipper.

The audience reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

“They had a great mix of brand new pop songs and classics like Michael Jackson,” said junior Patrick Anderson.

“They did some really creative variations on some songs that made them sound quite different from the originals … [Late Night with] Capella always seems like a well put-together show,” echoed junior Daniel Harold.

At the end of the night, the entire Capella ensemble sang a high-energy rendition of Katy Perry’s “Roar.” Backed by drums and a glockenspiel, the Capella brought their best to the stage and united the audience in an aura of pop perfection.

For Zinn, that’s what it’s all about.

“Music connects us because, even though we’re all so different, when we get together and sing, we’re united,” she said. “It’s awesome to share that with other people.”