Beltsville Resident prepares for Showtime at Apollo

Chris Urquiaga, 18, of Beltsville has been playing piano since he was 7 and singing since his early teens. He's performed at numerous recitals and concerts but on Feb. 10, he'll take the stage at perhaps his most prestigious venue yet.

Urquiaga will sing at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, N.Y., during the theater's weekly Amateur Night. At an Oct. 15 audition, he was among a handful of musicians, dancers and comedians selected from 300 entrants.

"I'm pretty excited for it," said Urquiaga, a 2009 graduate of High Point High School in Beltsville. He now majors in music composition at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. "Music is a passion that I've had ever since I was young."

Since 1934, the Apollo Theater has played host to music legends ranging from Duke Ellington to Jay-Z, as well as then-unknowns such as Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown and Lauryn Hill, who sang at Amateur Night long before earning worldwide acclaim.

Urquiaga is scheduled to compete Feb. 10 in the first round of a four-round amateur competition that will award $10,000 to a grand prize winner in October. Winners each night are determined by audience applause.

While he'd like to win the money, he said he is mainly honored to do what he loves at such a well-known venue.

"I get inspiration from music and I get concentration from music, as well," said Urquiaga, who will go by the stage name "John Christopher" during his Feb. 10 appearance. "I figured that my last name would be too hard to say."

Urquiaga has performed with High Point's choir and played piano for the Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel Choir at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He has also written compositions for piano, cello, violin and flute.

"He is a tremendous musician — one of the most positive young students I've ever taught," said Ned Lewis, High Point's choir director since 1996.

The aspiring composer won't be going it alone when he takes the stage in Harlem, as he expects a busload of friends and former colleagues to make the trip to cheer him on.

Beltsville resident Deborah Carr, who is organizing the trip, met Urquiaga while serving as a director of Friends of the High Point Choir, a nonprofit that helps pay for the choir's trips to competitions in cities like Atlanta and New Orleans. She said she looks forward to supporting him.

"He's a wonderful, humble young man ... I would consider him a prodigy," Carr said. "I expect Chris to go all the way. He's in it to win it."