Junior Ankitha Sarvesh stood in the wings, trying to concentrate on taking deep breaths of air and quelling the fire in her gut. Every sound around her was amplified. Every murmur resonated through her hazy mind, highlighting irrational thoughts: Do I have lipstick on my teeth? What if I can’t open this door to get on stage? What if I trip and fall?
Forcing her numb legs forward, Sarvesh moved onto center stage in Carnegie Hall, where she had been selected to sing by the American Fine Arts Festival (AFAF) last June.
Of course, the road to singing at the famed venue began years earlier. At age 11, Sarvesh first began taking singing lessons.
“I remember when my parents first realized I could sing,” Sarvesh recalled. “As a young kid, I would sing songs in the car, and a favorite was ‘Part of Your World’ from ‘The Little Mermaid.’ I think my parents just really listened one day and found that I had some kind of spark in me.”
Since then, Sarvesh has participated in elementary and middle school musicals and has been a part of the school choir every year. In eighth grade, she took part in Honor Choir, a choir that comprises select students from different parts of the country. She has been to States and Nationals in the last three years.
Sarvesh said that although she shares common fears such as stage fright and anxiety, she continues to sing because it allows her to be someone else, even if only for a few moments.
“Even though you’re singing a song, even though it is Ankitha singing a song, you’re not,” Sarvesh said. “You are actually the girl who is heartbroken in ‘Spring Sorrow’ or the girl who is cheating on someone in the Italian song . You don’t have to be you up there; you can be anyone. In fact, this is an art where it is better to go all out and it is applauded to go all out.”
Her biggest accomplishment thus far is singing at Carnegie Hall last summer. She received word of the opportunity in March.
“This is kind of a funny story because my mom actually sent in a recording of my singing to AFAF without telling me, because she knew that I would put too much pressure on myself if I did,” Sarvesh said.
Sarvesh first learned that she had been accepted at lunch during school, while scrolling through her e-mails. At first, Sarvesh thought the e-mail from AFAF was just spam, so she texted her mom to check its legitimacy.
“After she told me [what the e-mail was about], I could barely concentrate the rest of the day,” Sarvesh said.
From then until early June, Sarvesh prepared for her performance, practicing the two songs she was to perform around four to five times a week. Finally, the week of her performance, the last week of school, arrived.
“That was a hard week for me because the performance was on Sunday the 8th,” Sarvesh said. “That Wednesday, school ended. Then on Saturday, I was up at 7 [a.m.] taking the Chemistry SAT and that night my family and I took a red-eye to be in New York by 6 a.m.”
Upon arriving, Sarvesh and her family spent the day with relatives. Around 3 p.m., disaster struck. Sarvesh realized she had brought twice the number of contacts for her left eye and none for her right.
“I had this extreme power that I had to put in my right eye and I didn’t want to put it on because it hurt,” Sarvesh said. “Still, I didn’t want to go onstage with glasses. My dad had to go to the local pharmacy and get samples of Acuvue Daily Contacts. It sounds silly now, but it was so stressful to have to deal with that hours before the performance.”
With the crisis averted, Sarvesh proceeded with her customary routine before big events: coffee, a shower, cough drops and vocal exercises.
Hair and makeup took up the majority of the following two hours, and then it was time to drive to the venue.
“We took a cab and I was in heels and a long red dress,” Sarvesh recalled. “I must have looked really odd as a 15-year-old walking around the city in this prom dress. It was so long.”
Once at the Hall, Sarvesh went backstage to meet her accompanist to specify tempos and dynamics. Sarvesh recalls how she felt she had “known the accompanist for years, not just 20 minutes.”
Out of a group of 30 performers that night, Sarvesh was the only singer. She performed two songs: the contemporary poem put to music, “Spring Sorrow,” and an Italian song, “Se tu m’ami.”
Thirty seconds before her performance, Sarvesh found herself backstage in the Hall, rubbing at the goosebumps rising on her arms, trying desperately not to throw up. She then took two steps out onto the 10-foot stage ahead of her.
Sarvesh compares the process to a roller coaster.
“You go on, you want it to be over, but then, after the end, you think that you would do anything to go back on,” Sarvesh said.
The pressure she was under was based solely on the venue, Sarvesh said. Once she got onstage, she glanced down at some kids who had already seen their siblings perform. They were falling asleep in the front row.
“That definitely relaxed me a bit, and when the very first note left my mouth, I was sailing,” Sarvesh said. “I thought, ‘I just know that I can do this. I can sing these words in my sleep. Why am I worried?’”
Now, looking back on the experience, Sarvesh believes singing in Carnegie Hall changed her life from an internal standpoint.
“I am pretty self-conscious about a lot of things, especially with singing, where you’re literally placing yourself onto a stage where people are staring and judging you,” she said. “Yet, the entire seven minutes I was up there I thought, ‘So many amazing performers and musicians have been up here, get to [be] up here, so what does that make me? I must have been something to get here. I deserve this.”
In the years ahead, Sarvesh looks forward to pursuing singing through the rest of high school and possibly choosing a musical minor in college.
“Whatever I end up doing, I know that singing will always be a huge part of me,” Sarvesh said. “Putting yourself out there is nerve-wracking. Yet, it’s the best feeling after you come off. Because [even] if someone doesn’t appreciate [your art], at least you’re sharing.”