The night before the Mixed Company 30th anniversary concert, Lake Lag was echoing with songs from decades past. Over 100 alumni of the group gathered at Elliott Program Center for their yearly reunion the night before their large concert. And for many of them, it was like coming home.

“It’s like meeting family,” said Gina DeLuca ’88, “and then there’s your extended family, too.” As one of the original founders of the group, DeLuca was surprised – and overjoyed – that it survived beyond her last year at Stanford, and hasn’t stopped going for 30 years.

Concert-goers also soaked up some of the convivial vibe.

“It’s so nice, how it’s sort of like a family. I think the moment with the flyer was quite touching,” said Chen Lu ’19 of the show on Saturday afternoon. He was referring to the finale with founder Bonnie Zare ’88, who recently unearthed the very first dot matrix flyer for Mixed Company sign-ups from October 24 – 30 years ago to the very day.

Stories of that kind colored the music that evening. First DeLuca took the stage with her son, a current sophomore and Fleet Street Singer, and painstakingly re-enacted the agony of her 1985 Fleet Street audition. It didn’t matter anymore; the best was yet to come. The rest of the concert was about the aftermath of that first failure — and what a payoff it was. Five generations of Mixed Company revived songs from their time with wit and verve, capped off by the self-composed cult classic “Leland’s Island.” By that time, there were 31 generations of singers onstage.

“The hardest part is communications, because every year we have more people, and there are over 200 people in the Facebook group!” said alumni president Nicholas Chen. He is an alumnus from the class of 2013, taking charge of the concert and the ever-mushrooming reunion in addition to the labors of adult life.

Even if it is a minor logistical nightmare, surely the Mixed Company reunion turnout is any alumni association’s daydream. Yet in a world where alumni “giving rates” are currency in college rankings and networking is no longer a dirty word, DeLuca begged to differ.

“This is not networking,” she said bluntly, “I’m here to meet all of these people again. ”

But if eager young members want to nose their way in the world, the older and experienced are more than happy to help. Dr. Mary Pickett ’89 recalled, “Someone walked up to me at one of the reunions and said they wanted to take a med school class, where I was teaching then.”

“When that happens, we’re more than willing, because it’s someone we know,” said DeLuca.

Startup stories that never get old                                                              

Yet how these people across years know each other rests in their stories. Each five-year reunion has a sacred half-hour of story time, where the original members spin familiar yarns of its founding. Older members know well enough to push for details, and the tales inch towards creation myth with every telling.

Every member, young and less-young, for one, knows the story of twofold rejection that birthed Mixed Co. Founder Bonnie Zare ‘88 was turned down by Counterpoint, the sole a capella group for women. Her lone option exhausted, Zare distributed a flyer for a new a capella group – the first co-ed one in Stanford. DeLuca became the second member when she picked up the flyer, following her infamous rejection from the Fleet Street Singers for being a woman. And the rest is history.

“How many people can come out of Stanford and say, ‘we did it, we changed Stanford’?” said Gina DeLuca.  

“Even if it was by accident,” quipped Kyla Kent ’88.

Stanford and Mixed Company, then and now

Mixed Company is now large enough to have a mini-cult following for its own alumni. Fritz Stewart ’87, one of the founders, has name-recognition among 30 generations of singers.

While this was going on, the first group of Mixed Company was holed up in the background, spinning their first songs. As the group spiralled out into something larger than themselves, they went their different directions.            

Life surprised them. Paul Choi ’87, a biological sciences and engineering major, is now in the fashion industry with Ralph Lauren to his name. DeLuca majored in English with a focus on creative writing. “I’m a high school secretary now,” she remarked with a touch of rue.

“She’s much more than that,” came the retort from one of her friends.

And that’s what has stayed with them — the relationships. They catch up with one another at reunions, on business trips, in transit at New York City. Meanwhile, Mixed Company continues to grow.

Contact Fangzhou Liu at fzliu96 ‘at’ stanford.edu.