11-Year-Old Boy Picks Special Broadway Song To Perform At Talent Show
RYE, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- An 11-year-old Westchester boy has found a special Broadway song to sing on Saturday night at the Rye's Got Talent show.
Like a lot of kids in Rye, Daniel Pellegrini spent Friday rehearsing for the big show. His vocal coach, Anthony Valbiro, says he's been working hard to nail the performance.
"It's so perfect that he found this song," Valbiro tells CBS2's Dana Tyler.
But Valbiro says the song may have actually found Daniel.
"I was at breakfast eating some waffles and then I heard on the radio a commercial," Daniel recalls.
It was a commercial for the new Broadway musical, "Dear Evan Hansen," featuring the hit song, "Waving Through a Window."
"I was folding laundry, and he just quietly came up to me and handed me my phone with this song cued, and he just said, 'Does this help?'" Daniel's mother, Laura, says.
Laura says Daniel was recently having some trouble with some of the other kids in school.
"I kept saying, 'Are you OK?' because he just dusts himself off and moves on, but it's hard for him to express or tell me exactly what he's feeling," she says.
That is, until now.
"By the third line, I was basically in tears," she says.
"Literately, it's asking: Can anybody see me? Is anybody paying attention? Like if you're talking, does anybody want to talk back to you?" Daniel says.
"Wow Daniel, this is really, yes it helps. It definitely helps me," Laura told him.
But he didn't stop there.
"A few days later, he presented me with a paper, saying, 'mom, there is a talent show. Could I be in it?' I was like, 'sure, what would you do?' And he said, 'I want to sing, I want to sing that song,'" Laura says.
"For you to come to your mother and say, 'you want to know what's going on inside of me, this is it. And now I want to take this song and sing it in front of hundreds.' That's amazing," Valbiro says.
"I'm a little nervous," Daniel admits.
Especially having to get up in front of some of the very classmates who previously picked on him.
"I told him when you get up on stage, you will have more power and more strength than any kid in the school yard,'" Valbiro says.
Not to mention, a built-in fan club, with his three brothers, dad, and of course, mom rooting him on.
"We can't wait. When he says that last, 'Is anybody waving back at me?' I'm going to be jumping up waving, we're all waving," Laura says.
Rye's Got Talent will be held Saturday between 7 and 9 p.m. at the Lion's Club.
Laura says Daniel has since made up with the children who gave him a hard time, and she and her husband hope to take Daniel to see Broadways' "Dear Evan Hansen."
