The students arrived one by one to Glendale’s First United Methodist Church Thursday, where conductor Matt Catingub greeted them from a piano bench in the fellowship hall. It was the last round of auditions for the Glendale Pops Orchestra’s Dec. 9 show, “Holiday Pop!”
Anne Marie Bonino-Britsch, 13, was the fourth vocalist to sing for Catingub Thursday evening. A day earlier, Catingub and Glendale School Board President Joylene Wagner (a choir singer for the church) visited Rosemont Middle School inviting kids to audition, and Annie, as she is known, was in.
“The first song I sang was ‘You’ll Be in My Heart’ from ‘Tarzan’ when I was like, three,” said Annie, an alto. Every Sunday, she sings at Our Mother of Good Counsel in Los Feliz, but she’s never taken lessons. Her older sister has a singing voice, too, and because they are each other’s duet partners, Annie said, “It took everything in my body not to jump up to the harmony part in ‘Silent Night.’”
