Category: Schools

By Marion Filler

Who would’ve guessed that in addition to its historic significance, lovely parks and good schools, Morristown also would be a hotbed of talented performers?

Morristown Onstage has known it for 18 years — ever since it first showcased local, non-professional musicians, dancers and vocalists to compete for $2,500 in prizes while raising funds the Morris School District.

This year, Integracion America, a small band of five guys with a very big sound, takes the stage along with 15 other acts on March 4, 2025, at the Mayo Performing Art Center.

The Integracion Band. L-R: Left to Right: Hernan Sinche, Nelson Perez, Hector Chiqui, Yefer Blancas, Javier Sinche. Photo by Marion Filler

“It’s South American folklore,” said drummer Hector Chiqui, an alumnus of Morristown High School, describing the band’s repertoire. “It’s mostly traditional music from within all of South America, basically we play a mix of everything.”

“This group started two years ago,” at St. Margaret Church in Morristown, recalled fellow Ecuadorian native Hernan Sinche.

“The Morris School District invited us for a program at the Sussex Avenue School, and eventually invited us to perform at Morristown High School. We played here two times.”

Sinche plays the quena, the traditional flute of the Andes, that has a distinct timbre and piercing sound. The instrument is approximately 20 inches long and is engraved with his name.

The quena comes brilliantly to the fore in El Condor Pasa, one of two numbers Integracion will perform in the competition. Written in 1913 in Lima, Peru, the song became well known to American audiences in 1970 via Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water album.

Paul Simon based the English lyrics on the original Spanish, and called the song If I Could. No matter in what language, its universal message of longing for freedom to control one’s destiny was embraced around the world:

I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail . Yes, I would , if I could,  I surely would
I’d rather be a hammer than a nail . Yes, I would, if I only could , I surely would

Integracion’s version is strictly instrumental, but its profoundly beautiful sound is more than enough to transport the audience above the mountains, to feel the wind, and fly as high as its imagination will allow.

Hernan Sinche and Quran. Photo by Marion Filler — Hernan Sinche and his quena. Photo by Marion Filler

Nelson Perez, originally from Guatemala, is on bass. Javier Sinche, who is from Ecuador, plays guitar, and Yefer Blancas, a Peruvian, is on the electric keyboard.

“The keyboard lets us add a lot of instruments to expand the sound — which I do,” Blancas noted with a smile. It allows him to bring in additional guitars, trumpets and whatever else he thinks is appropriate.

That happens more often in the band’s second number, Zapanteando, a lively, toe-tapping song that couldn’t be more different from its haunting predecessor.

“You’ve probably never heard of it,” acknowledged Chiqui, “but it’s basically an Ecuadorian song that has spread throughout South America over the last 10 years. It’s made for dancing, a little stamping and clapping, but no, we won’t be dancing,” he chuckled.

Well, maybe some people will want to, joked Blancas, as the rest of the group laughed and nodded in agreement.

It certainly will be hard to resist.

Sixteen top amateur acts from Greater Morristown will compete at the Mayo Performing Arts Center on March 4, 2025 for cash prizes at the 18th annual Morristown Onstage. Presented by the Morris Educational Foundation, the show benefits programs in the Morris School District. Tickets are $43-$95, available online or at MPAC, 100 South St., 973-539-8008.

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Colonial Corner News: Black History Month events, and a coat drive at Morristown High

February 23, 2025

Jeff Prescott

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Black History Month events and a winter coat drive top this week’s editions of Morristown High School’s Colonial Corner News.

Starla Marcela and Ashlyn Nielsen (English) and Aitano Avendano Dreyer and Elva Consuela Barrera Diaz (Spanish) are the anchors.

Video: Colonial Corner News, Feb. 10, 2025:

Video: Noticias Colonial Corner, Feb. 10, 2025:

This week’s news:

Ilan Onigman and Will Quiceno direct these episodes. Broadcasting teacher Lance Armstrong is project advisor.

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Evan Nuzzi, the Singing Barista, to compete in Morristown Onstage

February 23, 2025

Jeff Prescott

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By Ellen S. Wilkowe

Evan Nuzzi credits the Morristown Starbucks for his shot at fame and fortune.

“I ran to the bathroom and sang it into my phone so I wouldn’t forget it,” Nuzzi, 21, said of a song he composed during his shift at the coffee shop.

Come March 4, 2025, Nuzzi will perform his composition at Morristown Onstage. He will join 15 other amateur acts who live, work or study in Greater Morristown competing for cash prizes at the Mayo Performing Arts Center, in the Morris Educational Foundation’s 18th annual fundraiser for the Morris School District.

Titled I Know it’s Wrong, Nuzzi’s song illustrates “the split second that you picture spending the rest of your life with someone,” he said. ”It’s about falling in love.”

Morristown Onstage 2025 finalist Evan Nuzzi enjoys a laugh on Media Day. Photo by David Okada

The same day he wrote I Know it’s Wrong, he came across a Morristown Onstage flier dropped off at Starbucks.

“Something just drew me in,” he said. “First the song came to me and then the pamphlet. That was two things in the same store.”

Starbucks musings aside, Nuzzi has been songwriting for the last six or seven years. He draws his inspiration from the likes of Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Billy Joel. He also has The Beatles on hand for his go-to playlist.

In addition to songwriting, the Somerville resident plays piano and guitar, which he learned from his father. He is teaching himself the drums.

No stranger to audiences, Nuzzi has performed all over New Jersey and — and once in Jamaica.

“I was on vacation and there was a talent show that was being hosted and I ran over, last second, to audition,” he said. “I got in and got to play in front of around 100 people. It was very cool.”

To date, he boasts 45 original songs that focus mostly on love and heartbreak.

He finds a therapeutic value in the process of songwriting. “It’s a way to get my emotions out,” he said. “Writing is always there and something you can come back to.”

When Nussi’s not singing into his phone, he is chilling with friends or slinging cappucinos as store manager at Starbucks.

Should he win the $1,000 top prize, he plans on buying a piano.

“I kind of played it into the ground,” he said of his old one.

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Morristown Onstage finalist Melissa Valeroso, from both sides now

February 23, 2025

Jeff Prescott

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By Beth Carroll

Melissa Valeroso believes in using both sides of her brain.

Her left brain led her to a Bachelor’s degree in accounting at Seton Hall and a career as a senior tax consultant at Deloitte in Morristown.

Her right brain led her to audition for Morristown Onstage. On March 4, 2025, when she takes the stage to belt out Christina Aguilera’s Bound to You, she’ll be all right brain.

Valeroso is one of 16 finalists this year in the Morris Educational Foundation’s annual fundraiser at the Mayo Performing Arts Center (MPAC). Every year performers with connections to Morristown, Morris Township, or Morris Plains vie for cash prizes bestowed by the judges and the audience at Morristown Onstage.

This year’s judges are Ladonna Burns, a New York-based singer, actress
and vocal performance coach; Gabriela Jileva, owner and director of
of Fred Astaire Dance Studios in Morristown and Summit; Tom Sellwood, owner and director of the Sellwood Studio of Performing Arts conservatory; and Allison Larena, president and CEO of MPAC.

Morristown Onstage finalist Melissa Valeroso. Photo by Beth Carroll

Should Valeroso win any prize money, she intends to donate half to the American Red Cross LA Region to help people impacted by the wildfires.

“The remainder I would use to get myself into a real studio and try recording some music,” she said.

Valeroso grew up in Old Bridge and still lives there with her parents, Liza and Ricky, while commuting to Morristown for work. Her parents immigrated to the USA from the Philippines, and while she and her brother were born in the USA, she is proud of her heritage and of her status as a first-generation American.

Although she’s always enjoyed singing — she participated in her high school’s musicals — Valeroso’s career in music was sidelined when, like Chloe in the movie Pitch Perfect, she ended up with vocal nodules that required surgery.

“I never really had voice training,” she said, “Unless you count the vocal physical therapy I had to do after my surgery to strengthen my vocal cords.”

That therapy worked! By the time she was 17, she was singing with her dad’s band, The Echoes, at gigs around New Jersey. “It was kind of a doowop band,” she said.

Valeroso performed such songs as At Last by Etta James, Sway by the Pussycats, These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ by Nancy Sinatra, and Mercy by Duffy.

In high school, she suffered from depression and while traditional therapy was helpful, she feels that music was a different kind of therapy that was also an effective tool in her mental health treatment.

“I think it’s important to talk about it,” she said. “Mental illness is real and it’s harmful to treat it as something shameful.”

While she feels strongly about using her voice to promote awareness of the importance of mental health, in a few weeks she’ll be using that same voice to wow the audience at the MPAC.

There’s that left brain – right brain duality again. If anyone can pull it off, Valeroso can. She’s had a lot of practice.

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Morristown Onstage finalist Franchesca Henry loves a challenge: She will sing one of opera’s most demanding arias

February 23, 2025

Jeff Prescott

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By Marion Filler

Soprano Franchesca Henry, 27, works hard to develop her voice. She teaches privately and online, lands parts in local productions, and has studied and performed in Italy. She also has a steady church gig with Calvary Episcopal Church in Summit, and a part-time job at Agricola in Morristown to help keep the lights on.

The extraordinary result of all her efforts will be in the spotlight when she sings Giacomo Puccini‘s Ch’il Bel Sogno from La Rondine (The Swallow), as a contestant at Morristown Onstage on March 4, 2025.

“It was (Puccini’s) first opera, and is not well known,” she explained. “But this aria is in the first act and you’re given a kind of treat almost as soon as you sit down. The song is like a competition piece,” a favorite among opera contestants because it is so challenging to perform, she said.

Morristown Onstage 2025 finalist Franchesca Henry. Photo by Marion Filler

Henry is among 16 finalists who will compete at the Mayo Performing Arts Center for cash prizes, in the Morris Educational Foundation’s 18th annual fundraiser for the Morris School District. The competition is open to people who live, work or study in Morristown, Morris Township, or Morris Plains.

Ch’il Bel Sogno (Beautiful Dream) is a “very moving piece, we call it a rubato,” Henry said. “It’s almost like speaking. And then it becomes very still. There are a lot of times when it moves forward, almost like it’s imitating speech, but then you have these still moments when I’m singing high A’s, B’s and C’s.”

“Changing from this moving – singing- speaking to this legato, this stretched-out singing, and finding the vowel sounds to make them the most beautiful and also understood,” is hard she admitted. “But the song is fabulous.”

The aria is about love; it’s by Puccini, after all. A courtesan fantasizes about the possibility of a chaste romance, a new relationship. Henry is the Swallow or the Rondine of the title, who flies towards the sun and happiness, yet may never find it.

A Bolivian American, Henry was born in Maryland and started singing when she was just 2 years old.

“My mom paid a lot of attention to me. She sang in a Bolivian cover band at the time, and I would just come out on the stage and join her.”

Henry took lessons as a child and studied voice for many years, and has performed with the Bronx Opera in New York and the New Jersey Light Opera in Chatham. She also participates in Dreamality, Inc., a nonprofit in Parsippany that offers music education to children in disenfranchised communities, and to the developmentally disabled.

However, the road to becoming a professional opera singer verges on the impossible.

“A lot of people think opera is so ancient that no one likes it. No. There are so many young people like myself who love opera and sing opera,” Henry countered.

To prove her point, she recently entered the Laffont Competition, sponsored by the Metropolitan Opera, as one of several thousand aspiring singers from the U.S., Mexico and Puerto Rico.

The requirements are grueling, and when all is said and done, 10 finalists are selected and their careers are virtually guaranteed. In the New York District, sopranos abounded. How tough is it to make the cut?

“Last year they compared it to getting Taylor Swift tickets,” Henry quipped.

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By Marion Filler

By Ellen S. Wilkowe

By Beth Carroll

By Marion Filler

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