Murrysville teen opened First Night festivities in Pittsburgh
Share this post:
Most high school juniors spend New Year’s Eve enjoying themselves with friends or family.
Lavanya Anantharaman, 17, of Murrysville, spent it a little differently: performing for thousands of Pittsburgh-area residents to open the First Night festivities Downtown.
“I’ve been singing since I was 5 or 6 years old, and our whole family sings,” said Anantharaman, who won the Williams Sing-Off competition to earn her spot as a First Night performer, along with $500 and $1,000 for the Franklin Regional music department.
Anantharaman sent an audition tape performing “I Know the Truth,” from the musical “Aida,” and also “Into the Unknown,” the featured single from the Disney film “Frozen 2,” and the song she performed at First Night.
After finding out she’d won the competition on Dec. 27, Anantharaman had only a few days to prepare for one of her largest performances.
“I don’t think I was super, super nervous. I was mostly excited,” she said. “It was really cold, though, which kind of felt like nerves.”
Her father, Dr. Sekhar Anantharaman, summed up her performance in one word.
“Awesome,” he said.
Anantharaman is not the only Panther to win the Williams Sing-Off in the past decade. Franklin Regional alum Nicoletta Giacchino won the competition during the 2010-11 school year.
Anantharaman said she can always depend on singing to lift her spirits.
“Songs can be about anything, about any emotion, and then it can also just be something fun to do,” she said.
Below, see video of Anantharaman’s Dec. 31, 2019, performance.