SHENANGO VALLEY Music festival attracts 1,700 young voices

By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
SHARON, Pa. -- Dulci Ellenberger knows what it's like to pound the pavement for weeks and months, looking for that big break on Broadway.
At 23, the Hickory High School graduate also knows that 90 percent of a would-be stage star's time is spent earning a living the hard way. For her, it means fitting auditions in around a full-time job as a New York City bartender.
Ellenberger got to share her real-world experiences with hundreds of young singers and aspiring entertainers as a workshop presenter for America Sings! -- an all-day music festival Saturday at Sharon High School.
About 1,700 school-age singers from six states, including 260 from Sharon and many from Hermitage, Farrell, West Middlesex, Greenville and Ellwood City, were registered to participate. Ohio participants included pupils from Austintown, Leetonia, Lisbon and Hanoverton.
Saturday's event was an experiment for America Sings. The organization generally sponsors three, two-day music festivals a year, but it was the first time the Alexandria, Va.-based nonprofit tried presenting in a small venue such as Sharon.
"This year we're in Atlanta, St. Louis, Los Angeles and Sharon, Pa. Go figure!" said John Jacobson, founder and volunteer president of the organization.
Credited teacher
He credited Vic Ellenberger, a Sharon teacher and choral director and father of Dulci Ellenberger, for bringing the festival of concerts and workshops to the Shenango Valley.
Participants performed, attended workshops and took part in community service projects, such as making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and toiletry kits to be donated to homeless shelters in Sharon, New Castle and Youngstown.
The event was to culminate with a free evening concert by all 1,700 young singers, which was expected to draw an audience of several thousand. Rainy weather throughout the day forced planners to move many outdoor events inside, but Jacobson said the event was running smoothly.
Jacobson remarked that America Sings events get little press attention when presented in larger cities, and his staff usually does most of the planning.
"We're getting lots of attention from the media here because it's one of the only things going on," he said. "And there's a great volunteer base here. I think they've given it more of a local, Sharon personality."
Barbershop harmony
For Ron Crivello of Hermitage and Win Davis of Sharpsville, America Sings was an opportunity to pass on the secrets of barbershop-style harmony to a younger generation.
Both are veterans of the Penn-Ohio Singers, a 60-member all-male vocal group that specializes in the four-part harmony style of barbershop quartets. They said the group has two young members, one 17 and one 9, and they're confident the barbershop style will continue to flourish.
"I think the kids looked excited about it," Crivello said after the workshop. "We're making changes. We're singing more modern songs, but we still use the same barbershop style. It's going to be around a while."
Dulci Ellenberger, the Hermitage native pursuing a stage career in New York, said she and a friend, Ryan Green of Cincinnati, were conducting workshops on how to prepare for an audition and the basics of life in the Big Apple.
The friends moved to New York when they graduated from Baldwin-Wallace College near Cleveland with bachelor's degrees in musical theater in 2002. Both have landed short-term acting jobs, she in a stage play in the city, he in a traveling youth-oriented musical production.
"It has its positives and negatives, but just living in New York City is worth the experience," Ellenberger said with a wide grin.
"I guess I'd tell anybody to do what I did. If you have a passion, you've just got to at least give it a try."
vinarsky@vindy.com