This isn’t necessarily big news beyond, say, Florida, or at least the United States, but it is to me and Cheryl (my wife), and likely to many of the people sitting in the orchestra section of the county government building’s board chambers, where I’m covering tonight’s the Flagler County School Board meeting as we speak.
Brett Copeland just belted out the Star-Spangled Banner. Wonderfully so, too. (It’s not as easy as you’d think, considering the endless massacres the old anthem endures when entrusted to Roseanne-like vocal cords that should stick with, at most, Liechtenstein’s or Iceland’s anthems before they try the bigger leagues. I’d hot-link the Roseanne massacre, which you can watch and hear on YouTube, but this being the school board’s wireless system I’m piggy-backing on, YouTube is blocked. Go figure.) With Brett was the Matanzas High School Army Jr. ROTC.
Anyway: why Brett? I don’t really know the guy. I used to see him, hear him and occasionally speak to him and likely aggravate him when he was in the Flagler Youth Orchestra, which Cheryl runs. Self-taught at the time, Brett was among the best of the group’s musicians, and certainly its most compelling. He could, and still can, command an audience, as he did tonight. Music is his anthem.
Brett is a senior at Matanzas High School, and a dual-enrollment student at Daytona State College. He’s due to attend Stetson come fall, from what I hear. To study music.
Don’t take my words for it: check out the school board’s website tomorrow, when the meeting’s video will be posted. You can skip the agenda items. Just watch Brett.
