Cydney Chamberlain is no stranger to the world of competitive singing. She recently competed in the Minnesota Music Teachers Association state competition at St. Olaf College. Not only did she sing four pieces in front of a judge, a nerve-wracking feat for any singer, but there was an added challenge: each composition was sung in a different language —English, German, Italian and French. She impressed her judges and walked away the winner in her age category, and she’ll now compete in Lawrence, Kan., in the Midwestern regional division competition this month.
Cydney is a member of the Cantori Choir, a choir of tenth-grade girls, at Wayzata High School. She has also participated in the prestigious Minnesota Project Opera for the past four years. It was seven years ago, though, that Cydney started taking voice lessons at Virtuosos Music Academy in Plymouth. “A woman in church heard me singing and turned around to comment on the pitch [of my voice], except that she though it was my mom doing the singing!” she said. Cydney’s mother, Gina, says she noticed her daughter’s voice at a young age on a car trip when “she sang all the way to the South Dakota border.”
