Success Stories of our Students

5/15/2008
Riverhead Highschool Junior Peter Cybulski has been chosen to sing with the Sound of America chorus on its European concert tour this summer. Maryanne McElroy, and Dhonna Goodale of Flanders, who has given him vocal training. The evaluations assess how well performers hold pitch and keep tunes. Peter is in the Riverhead High School chamber choir and show choir, which Mr. OHara leads, as well as in Ms. McElroys Harvest Gospel Choir and Ms. Goodales RBS Gospel Choir. His parents and his sister, Jessica, also sing in the latter two choirs. Hes also learned to play piano and alto saxophone, hes been in plays at the Gateway Theatre in Bellport, he danced in the Maximilian Kolbe Polish Dance Group when he was younger, and two years ago he performed onstage with Patti LaBelle in Westbury, singing "Dance with my Father" before an audience that included the late Luther Vandross mother. "Patti LaBelle has this thing at her concerts called, `So you think you can sing, where she calls people up on stage, and I sang a duet with her," Peter said. Last year, he participated in both Riverhead Idol and Hamptons Idol, and he won the latter competition. Selections for the Sound of America tour are based on New York State School Music Association scores, said Peters mother, June, who admitted she had never heard of Sound of America before. Peter also was recently named to the National Honor Society and he participates in a program called Health Occupations for the Partnership of Excellence (HOPE), in which students interested in medical fields get firsthand lessons from doctors at Stony Brook University Hospital. But Peter says his first choice for a career would still be something in music or theater. Hes hoping to study music theory at New York University, he said. His parents support him, but say theyd like him to have something to fall back on, just in case. "I keep saying, `Have a 9-to-5 job, too, " June Cybulski said.