Local music school to put on show in NYC

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The husband and wife team behind Valley Stream’s School of Singing, at 461 Rockaway Ave., are a week away from their first production in New York City, a remake of the classic “A Christmas Carol.”

“I took the Charles Dickens story and made my own musical out of it,” said Daniel Orama, who runs the school with his wife, Tami. Orama composed all the music, and cast members were recruited from around the tri-state area, including five from Valley Stream.

The path to his own musical included a detour that could have easily been a derailing for Orama. He and Tami met through singing in college, and they were active musicians until Tami became severely ill with a virus while they were living in Florida. She recovered, but without 90 percent of the hearing in her right ear.

“I was ready to give up music completely,” Tami said. The couple dropped out of the music scene.

When they returned to New York in 2005, Orama wanted to sing again. He studied extensively to be able to retrain his wife, and at his encouragement, Tami gave it another go. She had to learn to sing through a ringing in her ear, and the two worked together until she learned to conquer the dissonance. That added to Orama’s skill set as a teacher, he said, and the experience was the catalyst for the school’s creation seven years ago. They started with a single student and had a full school three years later. Their students were getting roles in productions at their schools and elsewhere, and new students arrived through word of mouth. The school now averages a roster of between 70 and 80 students, its focus being vocal training.

Orama’s revisiting of the Dickens classic is set in modern times. It has a cast of 32, a mixture of children and adults. That includes five Valley Streamers: the Oramas’ two daughters, Alivia, 8, and Brielle, 10; Kristen Smith and Anthony Enderica, both 15 and members of Central High School’s Performing Arts program; and Vyctoria Dinglas, 15, a student at South High School.

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