Performing in front of crowds can be empowering and invigorating. It’s far from easy though, especially when you are performing in front of fellow peers and teachers. University View Academy senior Joey Ragusa amazed the crowd of onlookers with his performance to open things up at UVA’s annual convocation event.
A member of the Glee Club at UVA, Ragusa sang Passing Through by Kaden MacKay. It was a song that resonated with him on several different levels.
“With every song I sing, there’s a reason and a message behind it,” Ragusa notes. “This song conveys a message about time passing by and missing it in the blink of an eye.
“This song in particular got me through a very rough patch in my life. It also made me calmer and helped me expand my vocal range, allowing me to hit higher notes in different genres.”
Ragusa doesn’t just like old music–he loves old music. And we’re not talking songs from the 80s or 90s, we are talking about the Frank Sinatra era. Sinatra is hands down Ragusa’s favorite artist. Why does he relate so much with the musical taste from this era?
“I love big bands, jazz, swing, and especially the work of Frank Sinatra,” Ragusa says. “Sinatra was a defining musical artist, and he had such a remarkable range of talent in music.”
The UVA Glee Club has been a blessing to Ragusa that has allowed him to explore his musical tastes and grow personally. He joined UVA as a freshman at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year. In his second year at UVA, Ragusa made the decision to join the Glee Club.
“I’m able to share my music taste with others, I’m able to see their tastes in music, and that has helped me rekindle my passion for older genres of music,” Ragusa says. “The people in Glee Club are genuinely amazing, and they have helped boost my confidence to become better and better as a musician.”
Ragusa’s time at UVA has encouraged him to dream. He has aspirations of becoming a professional voice actor. He wants to voice over all of his favorite characters he’s grown up watching. He wants to revive a new generation’s taste in the old style of music.
“UVA has been fantastic to me,” Ragusa states. “I will never forget all the teachers and everyone who said that I’ll make it far. My dreams were developed at UVA.”