Local Girl Sings Her Way to Juilliard Visit

Yorkville resident Julie Schleitwiler likes to joke that she can’t remember a time when her daughter, 14-year-old Anna Schleitwiler, wasn’t singing.

Judging by the kinds of doors Anna Schleitwiler’s singing is opening, she isn’t likely to stop anytime soon.

The soon-to-be Yorkville High School freshman—and her mother—recently completed a six-day trip east with the Elgin Children’s Chorus, making stops in New York City and Washington D.C.

The group saw The Lion King on Broadway, toured the White House and performed at The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York and at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

But the highlight of the trip was a seven-hour workshop at New York’s prestigious Juilliard School. There, even Anna Schleitwiler—who sings low second soprano for the Elgin group and said she practices for up to four hours each day—was surprised by the focused approach.

“Everything I’ve done has been kind of [on my] own,” Anna Schleitwiler said. “When you go to Juilliard, it’s very structured and very serious.”

Members of the chorus group worked with Juilliard instructors, who set the tone for the workshop while working in a group setting in addition to singling out individuals for extra work. Anna Schleitwiler said she learned how to take care of and preserve her voice, and picked up a few tips on how to successfully make music a profession.

She spent most of her time working with one of the school’s operatic sopranos.

“She was very nice and very easy-going and fun to be with, but you could tell she took her music very seriously,” Anna Schleitwiler said. “She sang for us and she hit notes that I thought nobody could ever hit.

“It was an honor to work with somebody in such a high profession, because she knew what she was doing and she wanted to take the time to work with us.”

Under director Jay Kellner, the children’s chorus spent three days in New York and three days in Washington. Anna Schleitwiler said the group takes a trip every other year and went to France two years ago.

Every day of the trip included singing—whether on stage or in the middle of an open field.

“Our director would say, ‘Oh, this is a great place to sing,” Anna Schleitwiler said. “We’d just start singing, and we’d draw an audience of people. It was really fun.”

But in recounting the trip, Julie and Anna Schleitwiler kept coming back to the Juilliard stop.

“I was just amazed,” Julie Schleitwiler said. “I was like, ‘I can’t believe my child is sitting here in Juilliard!’ I mean, it’s the most world-renowned school for music and performing arts, and there she is.

“It just gave me the shivers, because I know that’s really what she wants to do.”

When she was just 11, Anna Schleitwiler performed at the wedding of a family friend. In seventh grade she landed the lead role in her middle school musical. She earned the chance to sing the national anthem before a Chicago White Sox baseball game after getting—and acing—an audition with the team.

A search of her name on YouTube.com brings up eight videos of her singing popular songs into her computer screen. (You can see her singing Wicked's "Defying Gravity" here.)

“It was about fourth grade when we realized that she has a gift. That this wasn’t just a kid who likes to sing,” Julie Schleitwiler said. “This is somebody who can really shake the core of you with what she does.”

Anna Schleitwiler said she’d like to pursue a singing career and that she thinks a lot about singing on Broadway. She also said that while she’d jump at the chance to attend Juilliard if it were presented to her, she’s not sure if the elite school is right for her.

For now her plans for music are still broad.

“My plans for music—just as far as I know right now—are that I just want to change people’s lives with music and touch their lives the way [music] touched mine,” she said.

Video of the Elgin Children’s Chorus’ trip to Juilliard can be found by searching the group’s name on Youtube.com.