Schools
Shorewood Senior's Voice Lands Her Full-ride Scholarship
Deme Hellwig was awarded a four-year scholarship to the University of Wisconsin in Madison after being named a finalist in a music competition.
Deme Hellwig has spent her last four summers at music camp on the University of Wisconsin campus, honing and fine-tuning her voice. Next summer, she'll reap the benefit of summers past, when she attends Madison under a four-year scholarship.
Hellwig, along with 10 other musicians and singers from Wisconsin, was awarded the full-ride scholarship to Madison after topping a competition at the UW summer camp, in which musicians and singers from all over Wisconsin are matched against each other.
“The camp is what really turned her on to UW as a college choice,” said her mother, Lesa Hellwig.
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After a grueling set of auditions, which brought the large body of applicants to just 30 semi-finalists on June 26, Hellwig, a Shorewood High School senior, passed to the finals on June 29, from which 10 winners were chosen.
Hellwig is the first to win in the voice category, and the first Shorewood student to be selected.
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The months of training in Madison don't do Hellwig's devotion to music justice however. Ever since she was singled out by Lake Bluff Elementary music teacher Jayne Perkins for her talent, and encouraged to join the Milwaukee Children’s Choir, she has been polishing her voice.
Hellwig has been a member of Shorewood choir teacher Jason Clark’s music program, chamber choir, and concert choir, since she started attending the high school.
Having learned organization and sight-reading in Clark's class, she jumped at the chance to become part of the tuition competition which is open to all musicians from Wisconsin including foreign students residing in the state; a steep challenge usually championed by violinists, Hellwig said.
She found that her preparation from Clark’s music program prepared her for her auditions, because “he teaches us a lot more than just the music, (including) how to handle ourselves and how to organize a lot of requirements."
"If you can do well in his class, you can audition anywhere,” Hellwig said.
The final audition required an error-free singing of scales, sight-reading, as well as performing.
“Take every opportunity that you can if you have a passion for music, because they don’t come around that often," she said. "It is so worth all the work in the end.”
