How do you cap the brightest night of the year in Hollywood?
With a student choir led by a Wagner College alum.
Gregg Breinberg, who graduated in 1998 with a master’s degree in education, is no stranger to fame. In April 2009, a video of his fifth-grade chorus at Staten Island’s P.S. 22 performing “Eye of the Tiger” became a YouTube sensation, with more than 4 million hits. That June, reporter Sharon Alfonsi of ABC’s Nightline brought the story of Breinberg and his students to a national audience.
Breinberg and company have gone from success to success since that first video and the Nightline interview two years ago — you can see a sampling on Breinberg’s online blog.
The chorus’s biggest surprise came at last December’s holiday concert, when Breinberg introduced a special guest, actress Anne Hathaway, who invited the group to come sing at the 2011 Academy Awards in Hollywood.
Singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at the end of the evening’s program last weekend, Breinberg’s students were joined by all the night’s winners, who sang along with them to close the show.