Gin heard Montana sing at a chamber function, leading him to suggest that she submit an audition tape to the Dodgers for a chance to perform.
“I guess they liked it,” Gin said.
Montana takes singing lessons from a voice coach, sings in the school choir and has original music posted on her MySpace.com page, she said.
“I began singing when I was 3 years old,” she said. “Basically, I used to make up my own gibberish songs because I didn’t like to sing what everyone else was singing.”
But the national anthem presented a unique challenge, she said.
Montana knew that her rendition would be judged against countless other singers’ appearances at Dodger Stadium and elsewhere, she said.
Adding to the pressure was the fact that, despite the song’s familiarity, it’s not easy to sing, she said.
“Actually, everyone tells me it’s one of the more difficult songs to sing because it starts so low and then it goes high,” she said. “But I’ve rehearsed a lot.”
Still, Montana had a case of the nervous giggles when she took the microphone to the crisp grass behind home plate — her stage for the evening — reducing more than 30,000 chattering baseball fans to a hush.
As planned with her voice coach, Montana belted out a traditional rendition of the song.
With her giggles gone and a pack of particularly rambunctious teenagers — Montana’s friends — cheering her on from their upper-deck seats, Montana cruised through the number to the delight of the crowd.
“It was easier than expected,” Montana said after the performance. “But was I on key?”
Montana’s mother, her nerves now gone, gave a thumb’s-up.
“I thought it went great,” she said.
