Child’s dream nets national award

A fifth grader at Wheeler Avenue School can say something about himself that few others children in the country can say: he’s a national award winner.

Rainer DeLalio, 11, won the 2014 National PTA Reflections Award of Merit for original music composition. He found the inspiration for his song, “The Dream Song: Believe, Dream, Inspire,” when he changed schools in fourth grade. He transferred from the Progressive School of Long Island in Merrick to Wheeler.

“My first year at Wheeler I was referred to as ‘the weird kid,’ because I’m probably the only kid who didn’t do sports back then, other than fencing,” he said. “A lot of my song is based off that.”

His song is about a sad boy, looking to find his way in a new school. “We pause and stare upon this boy/who knows not where he’s going to,” he sings in the song. “But then he stops, looks in the sky and he begins to dream.”

The boy in the song dreams of popcorn and rock stars and interstellar travel, but also of going back to his old school.

“He’s a ghost in homeroom,” the song continues. “He waves hi, friends pass him by/he wakes up in his own bedroom and he begins to dream.”

Rainer said he found out about the song-writing opportunity from an announcement in gym class. He went home and told his parents, who pushed him to make an entry, and began working on his father Luke DeLalio’s iPad, using the Garage Band app.

When that didn’t work for Rainer, his father said he told him to play around on the piano to see what he could come up with.

Rainer said that once he found the medley, he asked his dad to write down what he said because of Rainer’s self-admitted poor handwriting. The two then recorded three takes on the piano and two takes of vocals to create the song that won Rainer a national award.

Luke DeLalio, who works as an instructor for a gifted and talented art program at Herricks High School, said that he was blown away by his son’s talent. He previously worked in a recording studio and said that his son’s lyrics are deeper than most of his previous clients.

“[The award] confirms my faith in him,” he said. “My wife and I feel he’s got a lot of talent. We know he’s a very talented kid. I didn’t think he had that lyrical sophistication. That was a real surprise.”

Rainer comes from a musical family. In addition to his father’s background, his mother, Tammy Hensrud, is an opera singer and his sister, Morgen DeLalio, has a manager and wants to act on Broadway.

The writing and recording of the song, Rainer said, was very fun for him, but there has been one drawback to performing the song publicly. “What stinks is that some kids in my class have started to sing it,” he said. “Some kids are chasing me around singing the song. It’s a little bit weird.”

Rainer said that his mother, father, sister and renowned cellist Yo Yo Ma have been role models and are his favorite musicians. His father said that Rainer loves movie and video game scores and often shares his favorite ones with his father. He said that he would like to act as a career and have music as a secondary option.