A recent Lower Merion High School graduate and a current contestant on the ABC television show “American Idol” came back to his high school Friday to meet with and perform for a small group of students inside the Black Box Theater.

A native of London, Louis Knight, 19, moved to Lower Merion when he was 10. He graduated from Lower Merion High School in 2018.

Addressing the small group of students in the school’s Second Stage program, Knight said he took a gap year after graduating to focus on his music.

“It’s just been such a blessing, I mean this whole experience,” Knight said as he referred being on the television show.

Although he reminded the students that he couldn’t say where he currently is in the show, Knight spoke a little about how he came to audition. When he first got a message from someone from the show, he wasn’t convinced that it was real.

According to what Knight told the students, he first received a message through Instagram from someone telling him they were from the show.

At first, he dismissed it a little and just sent it over to his manager.

But then they spoke to the person, and after doing a few auditions over Skype, they invited him to Washington DC, where they were doing a live audition with the show’s producers.

In Washington, Knight sang his original song “Change.”

On the American Idol television show, Knight told the judges that he is a part-time pizza delivery driver.

He also told the judges that he wrote the song “Change” about the suicide of a friend of him and his brother. He went on to say that the song came about when he had been trying to talk about his friend’s death, but then it came out in the song he wrote.

“This song I wrote as a tribute to him and everything he brought to this world,” Knight said on the show.

He also talked to the Lower Merion students about the song.

“To have the opportunity to sing such an obviously deeply personal song … about my friend Russel who passed away being able to kind of share something like that that was so deep with me that I’d written with such amazing incredibly successful musicians and songwriters was really just invaluable.”

No matter how far he ends up going on the show, he described it as a positive experience and left the students with a little advice.

“It’s been a whirlwind, it’s been incredible, and it’s been a blessing and just remember to listen to your teachers, because I didn’t,” Knight said as he ended his conversations with the students.

Following his performance and talk with the students, Knight stuck around for photos and to meet with the students.