Jul 5, 2007
There’s only one way for Zoe Lowenbein
— and that’s Broadway
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by Polly Tafrate
Throngs of well wishers congratulated the cast of
Simple Joys after their performance in December, 2005 at Westport’s Seabury Center. This had been a musical tribute to Grammy and Academy Award-winner, Stephen Schwartz, and he was in the audience that night.
Zoe Lowenbein, a resident of Weston, was basking in the afterglow of her solo, “Stranger in the Rain,” chatting with her family and friends, when Stephen Schwartz walked over to her. With a slight bow, he took her hand and said: “I expect to see you on Broadway in the near future.”
Heady stuff for anyone, especially for Zoe, who was looking forward to celebrating her 14th birthday in a few weeks.
Thanks to Dave, Zoe’s hopelessly audiophile Dad, Zoe has been surrounded with music throughout her life — everything from Mozart to John Mayer. Still, her mother, Dal, was surprised two years ago when Zoe approached her.
“I want to sing,” she told her mother, who was fixing dinner.
Her mother barely looked up.
“No, you don’t understand. Don’t laugh at me — take me seriously. I want you to take me to auditions. I can sing,” she practically shouted.
“But honey, we’ve never heard you sing,” said Dal.
That was soon remedied. Zoe asked her parents to sit on stools in their kitchen, shut the doors to the rest of the house and began to belt out a song. They were overwhelmed with the range and intensity of her voice. “She had a power, a big voice,” explains Dal.
They needed another opinion. “My husband thinks she’s different, he thinks she’s got something but isn’t sure what,” Dal told her friend, former Westonite, Whitney Kershaw, who had performed in Broadway’s Cats for four years.
After listening to her sing, Whitney was enthused. “She’s got an amazing range and makes the hard things look easy.” She encouraged the Lowenbeins to get Zoe a voice coach. They did.
Before long, Zoe approached her parents again. “I’m focusing on cabaret with this teacher. I’m not cabaret, I’m theater.” Now, three years later, she has specialized coaches — one for monologue and one for singing. She’s recently added a new dimension — opera — and studies with Pavarotti’s voice coach. “But, I need to work on dance,” Zoe laments.
This past winter she entered The CBS Early Show’s
Living Room Live!...Kid’s Edition competition. Dal sidestepped the criterion of submitting a song taped from her living room. Instead she submitted Zoe’s spine-tingling solo “Memory” from when she portrayed Grizabella at Staples High School’s Summer Theatre production of
Cats.
Three hours later, Dal’s phone rang. Caller ID identified it as CBS. Trying to act calm and self-assured, she listened to the voice on the other end tell her that Zoe’s song rocked the newsroom — they could talk of nothing else. The caller assured her that Zoe was definitely a finalist, having beaten out thousands of other kids, but she did need to send in a song taped from their living room. Zoe chose “Waiting for Life to Begin” from the musical,
Once on This Island. She didn’t win the CBS competition, but she remains unfazed. “I feel like a winner just for being chosen to be on the TV show,” she says. In a way, Zoe did win. The next day, a selective New York manager offered her a four-year contract.
Zoe’s mom now sees the beginning of her daughter’s passion as stemming from a case of Lyme Disease, when she needed to be home schooled. Her mother knew “she needed to be part of something to build her confidence and self-image.”
That something turned out to be joining Westport’s Center Stage theater program, which creates a nurturing environment by “assembling the finest Broadway actors, award-winning directors and industry professionals so children can work with the best so they can be the best.” Director Jill Jaysen recognized Zoe’s talent immediately and continues to offer her enthusiastic support.
Highlights of Zoe’s career include Center Stage’s production of
06880 The Musical, which won the coveted Moss Hart Award. Area teens invented characters about coming of age in affluent Fairfield County. Lawrence Rosen, co-orchestrator of Elton John’s
Aida, took the notes the kids wrote about their characters and wrote a song for each. Following the performance at Center Stage, it moved to off Broadway’s Beckett Theatre as part of The New York Musical Theatre. This spring it was chosen to be one of the plays presented at The Staged Equity Reading in New York City at The York Theatre where producers stage readings of prospective shows.
Zoe, the only one of the original cast to be chosen, joined more than 180 professional teens and young adults who auditioned. She attended rehearsals in NYC where she rehearsed with a new cast, an older cast, as she was the youngest person to get a part. While Zoe was at rehearsals, her mom explored the city, making certain to meet her daughter at the car for lunch to carve out a little down time in a hectic schedule. If
06880 goes to Broadway, it will open up a new chapter in Zoe’s life.
It’s hard to believe that this beautiful and confident teen is only a sophomore at Weston High School and that she’s struggled with Lyme Disease symptoms for upwards of five years.
When asked how her friends would describe her, Zoe says, “I’m known by my friends as the funny one, the one with the big personality. I’m also a good listener despite the fact people come to me for a laugh.” She admitted that many of her friends have never heard her sing.
Another love of Zoe’s is creative writing. She collects poems in hopes of making them into songs. “I enjoy improvising on the piano with my friends. We love making cool combinations.”
None of this could have happened without the support of her parents and older brothers, Max and David. “Not many mothers would do what mine does for me,” Zoe says, smiling at her mother with her warm brown eyes and sweeping lashes. “It’s been a whirlwind,” Dal says, but one can see she’s enjoyed every minute.
Zoe’s dream college is NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Until then her goal can be summed up in one word — Broadway. “It’s not a question of if,” she says, “just a question of when.”
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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