They are making their mark in orchestras, in galleries, onstage, on paper, on film and on canvas. “They” are the talented young people who are approaching their disciplines with a passion imbued with a youthful energy. The Chicago area boasts hundreds of these talents, in their teens and older. Each is deserving of applause. As a salute to them all, we talked to three young people, award winners all and voices of the arts to be.
Nicholas Brooks, vocalist
The honor: Downbeat magazine tapped him as one of its top college jazz vocalists in its “25th Annual Student Music Awards.”
Vital stats: The 22-year-old Batavia resident graduated in early May from Northern Illinois University with a degree in business administration and a minor in music. Since the age of 12, he has been singing jazz, rock ‘n’ roll and pop tunes with a number of cover bands (Finesse, Concord, etc.) and performing with the Batavia High School show choir. He has sung the “Star-Spangled Banner” before Cubs, White Sox and Bears games. Of the oft-mangled tune, Brooks says, “I really can handle the range.” He credits several voice coaches — John Stoffel, NIU’s Robert Sims and Ron Carter — whom he has worked with over the years. It was Carter and the NIU Jazz Ensemble’s reputation that led Brooks to Northern, where he sang and toured with the band for four years, performing with Wynton Marsalis, Frank Wess and Benny Golson.
A first: “At about 8 years old, I started singing gospel at Logan Street Baptist Church in Batavia,” he says. His first tune? “O Come All Ye Faithful.” “I had never seen that reaction from an audience in my life. I knew that this was something I had to continue doing.”
What drives him:”I crave the energy that audiences give to me. It’s such a spiritual high to me to be able to communicate a song to someone,” says Brooks, who also plays piano, percussion and writes music. “Music has its own life form and I love to be able to communicate that message to everyone.”
Beyond music: His hobbies include weight training, yoga and running, including mini-marathons.
Whom do you admire in your art? Celine Dion because she “trains her voice intensely and takes great care of it.”
What others say: “I noticed he had a strong desire to work hard and he had a natural flair for wanting to entertain,” says Carter, NIU’s coordinator of jazz studies and director of NIU’s Jazz Ensemble, who tapped Brooks as one of the ensemble’s vocalists. “Rarely does a vocalist qualify in the freshman year [to sing with the band].”
Next up: Working on his own record, negotiating with several labels and heading in August to Las Vegas where plans are in the works for some performances as an opener.
Constance Jzu Han Parng, fiction writer
The honor: She has won numerous awards for her writing, but “The Fire Feeding Heartbeat of Tap Water Rain,” a fiction piece about a family in the suburbs, resulted in her being named a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts. The award honors 20 distinguished graduating high school seniors.
Vital stats: The 18-year-old Fremd High School grad, who lives in Hoffman Estates, says “I kind of dabbled with [writing] ever since freshman year, but I never really thought of myself as a writer. I always thought that a writer was . . . some exotic person from somewhere else who has written thousands and thousands of poems. I think I started wanting to write when, as a freshman, I saw other student writers present at our school during Writer’s Week.” And then there was a class with her sophomore English teacher, Gary Anderson. “Taking his class is really liberating because he made me feel like anything could be literature.”
A first: Her first screenplay was “about a journey through a person’s mind where in a split second, you close your eyes and enter a different kind of reality. The core [is] man’s struggle with life, the world, and also the enduring and hope and passion and joy of it.”
What drives her: “It was just something I saw myself excelling in and a way for me to express myself,” Parng says. ” It’s something that you carry around with you all the time. It’s the way you look at things. It’s your gratitude for being alive.”
Beyond writing: At school, there was theater, the speech team, peer mediation. There was volunteer work with the elderly. “I think, like deep down inside, I have this little secret desire to be a Renaissance woman and master all the arts,” Parng says.
Whom do you admire: “William Faulkner. I actually carry around his Nobel Prize acceptance speech with me,” she says. What others say: “She’s extraordinary, in that she is so aware of the world around her and doesn’t really shut anything out,” says Julie Devaud, a Fremd English teacher. “She’s brave and fearless about looking at the world, which I think is extraordinary for a high school student. . . . I think she has seen writing as a way to cope with that, the difficult things in the world and the beautiful things about the world .”
Next up: She’s finishing a screenplay “about a group of jazz musicians living in a Japanese internment camp during World War II,” getting a summer job and prepping for dramatic writing courses at New York University School of the Arts this fall.
Allison Reisz, photographer
The honor: She took the top prize in the 13-to-18-year-old category in the “Portraits of True Wealth” photography contest. Sponsored by Van Kampen Investments, the contest asked Chicago-area students to submit a photograph that they believed captured life’s true wealth, plus an essay explaining why. Her winning photo, titled “Opportunity,” was shot during a trip to the Dominican Republic and shows a young boy perched at his school desk. Reisz wrote: “In 20 years it won’t matter what jeans you wore, how your hair looked, or how much your shoes cost, but what you learned and how you used it. Education is the only key to true wealth. . . . In this boy’s eyes, I saw sadness, hope and, most of all — opportunity.”
Vital stats: The 17-year-old, soon-to-be senior at Buffalo Grove High School credits photographer dad Trevor for her interest. “I’ve been taking [photography] in schools since sophomore year.” She has worked as a photographer for her school newspaper and published photos as part of an internship with the Daily Herald. “I used to play a lot of sports and everything — soccer, tennis, swimming,” she says. “I’ve basically gotten more into photography as I’ve grown up in high school.”
A first: A Nikon FE2 was her first camera.
What drives her: “With art, there [are] all kinds of different perspectives and lots of viewpoints on one picture or one photograph,” she says. “I think that’s a cool way to express yourself and express your art. Like this photograph I took for this contest . . . I really like that one because it portrays something and it gives you a feeling. And when you read the words I wrote, it makes you feel something.”
Beyond photography: “I wish I could sing,” Reisz says. “[And] I’m going to take an art class next year because I want to get into other mediums . . . but photography is my No. 1.”
Admires most: Contemporary American photographer Edward Weston.
What others say: “As we were going through the hundreds of entries, this photograph in particular jumped out in terms of the photo quality, contrasting colors and composition,” notes Clay Cooper, a creative partner at Plan B [The Agency Alternative] marketing agency. “However, the real strength of this photo is the relationship of the photo to the theme `True Wealth.’ Allison captured this relationship both photographically and in her essay.”
Next up: There is summer school and lots of photography. “Right now, I’m making a portfolio,” she says. “My theme is ultrawide angle architecture and so I use fish-eye lenses and stuff.”
