Wallaceburg singer dazzles in New York

It appears Taylor Swift isn’t the only singer making waves in New York.

A classical singer from Wallaceburg came home with some hardware after a recent trip to the Big Apple.

Mikayla Lozon, a 16-year-old Grade 11 student at UCC, made the trip along with the rest of the school choir for a music competition.

“We had different categories and three weeks before New York my choir director asked me if I wanted a solo for one of the songs and I was like ‘yeah I do’,” Mikayla told the Sydenham Current.

“We went to New York and we had a couple of days of just touring around. The second last day we were there was the competition. We had our warm up and went up to the Church.”

“We had three adjudicators and one of them was from Julliard Music School. I did my solo and we performed our piece and than we had our adjudication. She didn’t say anything about my solo but she said something about everyone else’s solo, so I got really nervous.”

Mikayla said later that night they had the awards ceremony.

“I was the only one out of my choir to get an award for my solo. So the award was ‘Worldstrides Heritage Performance Maestro Award’. There were five other people who got an award too from different schools and there was 10 schools all together.”

Mikayla said the students had a choice to go the ceremony or go to mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

“I wanted to go to mass at the cathedral. We went to mass and then got back on the bus to see if we could catch the last little bit of the award ceremony.”

Luckily, she made it just in time, but with a little help.

“I twisted my ankle the first day we got there so it was hard for me to walk. We pulled up and stopped just outside of Riverside Church and just before everybody got off, Mr. Milnar said that I got an award for a solo. I had to run into the church. Once I got in the church Mr. Ditmar had to carry me up to the front because I couldn’t even walk anymore. I was there to get my award. I was lucky.”

Mikayla said the song the choir and her sang was called ‘When You Believe’ from the Prince of Egypt.

“There was a couple bars as a solo in the beginning and than through the rest the Choir sang. We had four guys in the Choir with us. About 30 people in the choir,” she said.

Mikayla said she practising at least two hours a day and is mostly am teaching herself.

“I started lessons when I was 12 and then for about two years, and than I quit. I have been getting help at school with Mr. Milnar and all the music teachers and my Grandma has been helping me too a lot.”

Mikayla said she has aspirations to continue on with her music career.

“I would like to make it big. I would be cool. I am a really faithful person, I like to go to church. So if I make it further in music, I hope to use it to bring people closer to God.”

Mikayla said she is exploring some opportunities to possibly sing the national anthem next year at a Sarnia Sting game and a Knights game in London.

Mikayla was also the winner of the ‘Junior Star Search’ in Wallaceburg back in 2013 and was the ‘Senior Star Search’ winner this year.

Mikayla recently recorded a track with Chatham producer Ben Srokosz of Spur of the Moment Media.

Have a listen here: