Aspiring opera singer finds racial harmony at Suitland High

By J. Freedom du Lac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 25, 2010; A01

Back when Joey Baker was a freshman trying to find his way at Suitland High School, it was not uncommon for the aspiring opera singer to hear catcalls as he walked between classes.

Students at the overwhelmingly black school in Prince George's County would teasingly call their white classmate "Justin Timberlake" or "Robin Thicke." Or, in the ultimate indignity, they'd liken Baker to hip-hop punch line Vanilla Ice, chanting, "Ice, ice, baby," as he tried to slip into math class.

After four years, he can finally laugh about it. He still walks those same halls, but the song does not remain the same.

The catcalls faded and the social hierarchy shifted -- maybe simply because time passed and people adapted, or maybe because everyone got to hear Baker, who has blossomed into one of the country's most promising young opera singers. At 17, he has already sung for the president, with Mary J. Blige and at the Kennedy Center.

These days, the charismatic Suitland senior with the outsize baritone -- one of the stars at the school's selective, high-achieving Center for the Visual and Performing Arts -- gets fist-bumps from the guys and hugs from the girls, and is repeatedly acknowledged by name. His name.

"When we walk to class, all I hear is 'Hey, Joey! Hey, Joey!' " says Baker's best friend, Tre'Von Bray. "I'm like, wow, he's really popular."

How popular? "Joey's just as popular as the quarterback," says Maria Saldaña, coordinator of the arts program.

That's no small feat given that opera "is not cool music," as Baker allows -- and also that he's at a school of 2,436 students where roughly 96 of every 100 are African American and only one out of every 100 is white. Baker, who jokingly calls himself Suitland's "cool white boy," stands out with his soft blue eyes, leonine mane and scruffy goatee, not to mention his penchant for singing Tosti (in Italian) and Shakespeare sonnets (in Elizabethan English) at school functions.

But if he's a fish out of water, then Baker is something of a mudskipper, a fish that also walks on land.

"That's just kind of how it's always been for me," he says.

Most of his friends are black. His girlfriend, Evelyn Kenner, a fellow arts program student, is black. Before his family moved to Greenbelt at the end of 2008, many of his neighbors were black. He doesn't give it much thought; his best friend, Bray, who is black, says that aside from exchanging a few NASCAR jokes, he's never had a conversation with Baker about race.

Even when Baker got into a fight after a black student taunted him several years ago, it wasn't a big deal, he insists: "It was just somebody being stupid about me being white." He refuses to recount what exactly was said. "It doesn't even matter."

The students "don't see each other through color," Saldaña says. "I don't think in any way it defines him."

At school this month, Baker sat talking with friends in the arts program about cars, colleges, recitals and "the crazy atonal" work of composer Igor Stravinsky. He sprinkled his banter with slang not generally associated with the classics -- "grimy," "dirty," "chillin'. "

"Son, you can't say 'George Handel,' " he said at one point. "You either say 'Handel' or 'George Frideric Handel.' "

A loaded résumé

Baker's immersion in a kid culture far from the opera world feels organic, teachers and friends say. Saldaña recently had a group of drama students in her office to watch a video of a choral performance. When it was Baker's turn to sing, "there was this uproar that I only see kids have about celebrities," she says. "For them, it's about his talents."

Baker's résumé is already loaded. He was selected by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts to attend YoungArts Week in the prestigious high school arts competition. He's a Presidential Scholars in the Arts semifinalist. He's twice been invited to attend Boston University's Tanglewood Institute, a top summer program for high school musicians.

With his Suitland classmates, he's also sung for President Obama at the Christmas in Washington celebration with Mary J. Blige, Neil Diamond, Justin Bieber and other pop stars; and performed at the Kennedy Center, Chicago's Orchestra Hall and Harlem's landmark Riverside Church. He's been singing professionally -- for pay -- at churches since 10th grade.

Next fall, he will begin vocal performance studies at the University of Hartford's Hartt School in Connecticut on a full scholarship. (His friend Bray will be there too.) "I want to be a professional opera singer," Baker says.

Matthew Osifchin likes his chances. Osifchin, a professional opera singer, has been teaching voice to Baker since his freshman year and says his star pupil is "one of the top high school baritones in the country."

So what's he doing at Suitland?

Dan and Janet Baker hear it all the time. That Suitland? Really?

Like other parents of students in the arts program, the Bakers say it's often the first question they are asked about their son. Suitland High has a reputation for being a rough place, and the school's neighborhood has historically had one of the highest crime rates in Prince George's.

But the excellence of the arts program superseded that, the Bakers explain in their living room in Greenbelt, 15 miles from Joey's school. "It's a special unit within the school," says Janet, a program analyst for the General Services Administration.

"It's like a mini-conservatory," says Dan, a carpenter at the Canadian Embassy. "Joey is exceptional. But he couldn't be here without that program."

The youngest Baker boy

The Bakers met at an ecumenical Christian ministry in Dupont Circle. He was a Texan who had moved to Washington with the Army; she came from North Carolina to join the Church of the Saviour. They both sang in various choirs. They lived in a small apartment on Wisconsin Avenue in Northwest before buying a condo in Beltsville. "We could afford Prince George's," Dan Baker says of their move to the majority-black county. "That means we're in the minority. That's the reality here, and it's not been an uncomfortable reality."

They raised three boys in Beltsville. The oldest, Matthew, went to High Point High School, sang in the choir and was once beaten up on his way home from school. "He got crosswise with a gangbanger," Dan says, adding that a passerby saved his son by breaking up the fight. Middle brother Thomas went to Suitland in the arts program for two years before he dropped out.

Joey joined a youth choir in College Park when he was in third grade. "Singing was kind of forced on me," he says. "I was 8. I wanted to play football or soccer." At his first solo performance, he went blank: "I forgot all the words onstage." But he was hooked.

"Joey had a higher-than-average level of interest," recalls Kenneth Boucher, who was the choir's director and now runs the vocal and piano program at Suitland. For a third-grader, keen interest and encouraging parents mean as much, if not more, than a vocal gift.

The youngest Baker boy attended Hyattsville Middle School's Creative and Performing Arts magnet program and then auditioned for Suitland, despite his parents' trepidation about sending him to the talent incubator. "I was never against Suitland, but I had some concerns," Dan Baker says. "They were just not in control of the student body. The environment was not stable and businesslike. But we had no illusions of safety wherever [Joey] was going to go. There aren't any places where there's not a safety issue."

The Bakers had hoped Joey would attend the county's highly competitive academic high school, Eleanor Roosevelt in Greenbelt, but he says he deliberately tanked the school's admissions exam because he only had eyes for Suitland.

His parents now agree that was the right move. They credit Suitland with giving Joey a musical education on par with the best in the nation. That it came at a public school and not from a name-brand conservatory delights Boucher, who was recruited to the school's faculty six years ago.

"I like being the underdog," he says after a chamber choir practice that began as most Suitland students were leaving for the day. "We surprise people every year. I love going to festivals and competitions and they go: 'Suitland? What's Suitland?' "

'Trust your technique'

The arts world is taking notice. Suitland sent its first student to Tanglewood four years ago; this year, 10 were accepted. The program's 26 graduating seniors studying voice or piano have received nearly $1 million in scholarships, with more coming, Boucher says.

And that's just one division of the arts program, which also includes band, dance, theater and visual arts. The program's graduation rate has been 100 percent for six years, Saldaña says.

One morning at Suitland, Baker shuffled into a small studio wearing tan cargo shorts, multicolored Vans and a black polo shirt embroidered with the school logo. Osifchin sat at the piano and started Baker on his scales before rehearsing an aria from "Don Pasquale."

"Don't go too much into the throat; don't go 100 percent, go 90 percent," Osifchin said. "Relax your jaw. Trust your voice. Trust your technique." Baker nodded at each critique and sang, and sang, and sang.

They moved on to an aria from Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" that Baker is considering for a Maryland Opera Society audition. Osifchin pushed him: "When you're doing those triplets, you're showing off." They worked on finding the emotional core of the lyrics. There was a quick Italian quiz, then more singing. Suddenly, Osifchin beamed. "That was beautiful!" he said.

Session over, Baker wandered back into Suitland's halls. Nobody called him Domingo or Pavarotti, but there were no "Ice, ice baby" catcalls, either. They just called him Joey.

Staff writer Lonnae O'Neal Parker contributed to this report.