The Plain White T’s. X Ambassadors. Michael Franti. Your band?
The “Beats for Good” competition gives Vermont high school students a chance to be the opening act for a nationally known band and win $5,000.
Bands are asked to submit a video performing a cover or an original song. Louis Napolitan ‘27 is submitting a video of himself playing trombone. He is making his own mashup of two songs called “Saint James Infirmary” by Louis Armstrong and “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals.
“My favorite part about being a musician is being able to create and listen to beautiful sounds in my own vision, and also epic jazz solos,” Napolitan said. “Some of my biggest accomplishments include having my original compositions selected for both the OPUS-38 contest and the VSO MasterClef competition and playing in the All-State Jazz Ensemble this year.”
Orchestra teacher Kathleen Kono has been encouraging students to submit a video.
“The fact that they were offering a competition for high school students, whether it be in a modern band, or if it was a show choir type of situation or jazz ensemble, I just thought it was cool to have that opportunity to do that” Kono said.
Kono learned about the program from “Beats for Good” representatives Linsey Rusnock and John Mullet.
“My mom works for “Do Good Fest,” Rusnock said. “She came to me when I was still a music education student at the University of Vermont with the idea of having a high school competition to get local high schoolers involved in the competition.”
The winner of the 2023 “Beats for Good” competition was a band based out of South Burlington called “Ms. Lee Fan Club” and the winner of the 2022 competition was the “Kingdom All Stars” who are an audition-required band made up of students from all over the Northeast Kingdom.
Todd Wellington is the director of the “Kingdom All Stars”.
“It was wonderful. It was a beautiful day and the band really performed well,” Wellington said. “They [the students] were very excited.”
With the $5,000 they got by winning they bought new speakers and recorded new songs – one of which was “Truck Song” which got airplay on the radio.
The Grand Prize Winner will be invited to perform on the main stage at Do Good Fest 2024 on July 13.
“There’s a great firework show that happens at the end of the night,” Rusnock said. “Everybody is really just there to have a good time and spend time with each other and listen to some really fun, good live music.”
