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Mostly Cloudy Lynbrook student performs at Carnegie Hall
Lynbrook South Middle School student David Padilla is a child prodigy.
At age 3, he started playing piano by ear, and then started taking piano lessons to learn how to properly position his hands. When he turned 4, he started performing in musical theater, and by age 5, he first performed on stage as an Oompa Loompa in Way, Way Off Broadway’s production of “Rohl Dahl’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” Last year, David recorded his first original song “Spellbound.” And in April of this year, at the age of 13, he performed on Broadway and at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan as a member of the Camp Broadway Kids.
To get this opportunity, David had to sing “Magic to Do” from composer Alan Menken’s musical “Pippin,” about a young prince searching for his meaning in life. David also had to send a video of himself dancing to the Camp Broadway Kids in New York City. A few days later, he said, he found out that he was selected as one of 60 children from across the country who were asked to perform with Broadway actors for Menken’s 35th Birthday Gala at Carnegie Hall.
“At first I didn’t believe it, but when I found out it was true, I was very excited, ecstatic you could say,” David said. “It’s a dream come true.”
He also said that he was excited to work with actors who have worked under Menken, whose song “Proud of Your Boy,” from Disney’s “Aladdin,” he uses at every audition he enters for musicals.
“They said he scored really well for the Menken thing,” she said.
“ROCKTOPIA” fuses 20th-century rock music with classical compositions. On April 15, David worked as a back-up singer for “I Want To Know What Love Is,” by Foreigner.
“It was very cool, very fun,” he said of the experience.
The road to stardom
As an infant, David was constantly singing, but when he had to speak, he would frequently whisper during conversations. Karen then got him involved in musical theater so that he would have to speak loudly.
“They put him on stage and said ‘David, we can’t hear you,’” Karen recalled of producers at Way, Way Off Broadway.
After that experience, David learned to speak and sing louder. He has since performed in more than 50 productions, according to his website DavidKaid.com. At Lynbrook South Middle School, he played Captain Georg Von Trapp in the school’s spring production of “The Sound of Music.”
He also has perfect pitch, which he said helped him play piano by ear at age 3. His mother then asked pianist Tommy Faragher to see if he could teach David the proper fingering. Faragher met with David, and put goldfish on the keys. “If he played the keys right, he would get a goldfish,” Karen recounted.
David also took up drums, guitar and clarinet. At school, he plays piano for the jazz band and recorded his own original song “Spellbound” with chorus teacher Annie Pasqua.
“The future of the arts is in the hands of our younger generation and David exemplifies the passion and drive that one hopes to see in promising young artists,” Pasqua said.
David said that he decided to write a song because all of his music instructors were telling him to, but he would respond that he didn’t know what to say. His guitar teacher, Paul Biondi, then played “I don’t know what to say” to a tune, which inspired David to write.
As a result, the song contains the lyrics “I don’t know what to say because I think about you all night and day.”
David also became interested in dancing because he saw two girls perform a tap dance to his song. Last June, he started taking dance classes at Two Worlds Gym in Greenvale with Lance Lot Theobold Jr., who trained “Hairspray” star Nikki Blonsky. David’s sessions are comprised of ballet and tap dance, which Theobold said he excels in. For ballet, Theobold said, he works with David on his posture.
“He’s not a dancer, he’s an actor who can move,” Theobold said. “Look out for him if not in the near future, than the future, to be one of Lynbrook’s finest.”
To see more of David’s work, visit his website DavidKaid.com.
