From classroom project to singing with Foreigner

When Jenna Lea Rosen and her peers got a class assignment to write a radio jingle, she imagined the result would impress her high school choir teacher — as opposed to, say, Kevin McHale from the TV series “Glee.”

And if she and her fellow students pulled off the project, she imagined it would lead to a stellar grade — as opposed to, say, a performance onstage with the rock band Foreigner.

Surprise, surprise.

On Aug. 27, Jenna and two dozen other students from Los Alamitos High School will join the venerable hit makers onstage at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in Irvine.

For the last several years, Foreigner has organized a high school competition before nearly every North American concert, with school choirs submitting videos for public voting.

The trophy: a chance to provide a choral backing to the song “I Want to Know What Love Is” during the show.

“We didn’t really have any idea what was the prize,” said Jenna, 16. “We just thought we were writing a jingle for a contest.”

If Los Alamitos High choir teacher David Moellenkamp hadn’t gotten a timely tip, there might not have been a jingle for any reason. This spring, a parent emailed Moellenkamp to inform him about the Foreigner contest, which was sponsored by KSWD 100.3 FM, “The Sound.”

The teacher, a longtime fan of the band who has even arranged Foreigner tunes for his choir students in the past, figured he had nothing to lose.

“It was really a last-minute decision,” Moellenkamp said. “We had some extra time in one of my classes.”

Entrants had to record a jingle for KSWD’s “Mark in the Morning” show, so Moellenkamp had his students arrange one — though he remained coy about its purpose. When station officials chose Los Alamitos High as one of two finalists, the choir took a bus to the station in Los Angeles, where it performed the jingle live on air along with an a cappella arrangement of Coldplay’s “Fix You” arranged by Jenna.

KSWD took a text vote from listeners, and when Los Al beat out Irvine’s Woodbridge High School, McHale — who listened to the performances live in the studio — announced the winner on air. And Foreigner, a longtime advocate of music education, had its new collaborator in Orange County.

When the band enlists a choir to back it onstage, it donates $500 to the school’s music program. Members of the choir pay the favor forward by selling Foreigner CD’s before the show, with proceeds going to the Grammy Foundation, which supports music in the classroom.

Band member Tom Gimbel has a personal reason as well for giving school choirs a break: The multi-instrumentalist credits one for starting his music career.

“I was in a choir before high school, in middle school,” Gimbel said. “That was actually my first paying job. They paid us to sing Sunday at the church. It was great. I was so much happier than I would have been cutting lawns, which is the normal way a kid would earn a couple bucks on the weekend.”

Jenna, a senior who lives in Seal Beach, was excited to share the spotlight with a band whose music had withstood decades.

“I’ve always heard their songs on the radio,” she said. “‘I Want to Know What Love Is’ is kind of an iconic song. I think everyone knows it in this generation.”