KU Law News
KU Law News
Feb. 12, 2010
Law student to sing national anthem at KU men’s basketball game
Winters
LAWRENCE – As a professional vocalist, Benjamin Winters has performed countless times before live audiences – but none as large as the crowd that will listen in silence as he sings this Saturday night.
Benjamin Winters sings the national anthem before KU takes on Iowa State on Feb. 13, 2010, at Allen Fieldhouse.
Winters then leads the KU alma mater.
Winters sings the opening solo in this YouTube video clip of Octarium. Listen to more audio clips of the vocal group at www.octarium.org.
Winters, a first-year law student and bass-baritone, will sing the national anthem just before the University of Kansas men’s basketball team tips off against Iowa State. If the contest draws a full house – and it surely will – more than 16,000 spectators will hear Winters’ solo rendition at Allen Fieldhouse.
“I am already a tad nervous, to be honest,” he said.
Winters won the honor through an audition process in the fall. Both the KU choral director and the athletics band director screen potential singers and choose the ones who will perform at games.
“I had auditioned once when I first came to KU in 2000,” said Winters, who has a master’s in vocal performance from KU. “When I arrived for that audition, I found out they also wanted to hear me sing the KU alma mater, which I had neither seen nor heard prior to the audition. Needless to say, the audition did not go so well because of that.”
Since starting law school in May, Winters has maintained his vocal chops through continued performances with Kansas City-based Octarium, an eight-member choral group he helped found in 2003. He performed in the ensemble’s holiday concert during winter break and will sing again with the group later this month in Kansas City.
Winters already juggles an arduous first-year law school schedule with family life; he and his wife, Ashley, have a 2-year-old son, Cooper. Adding rehearsals and performances to the mix makes for a difficult balancing act.
“Luckily, my Octarium schedule tends to be very concentrated at specific times,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing that I can, in a sense, put on the back burner until the couple of days before a performance.”
A native of Owatonna, Minn., Winters has performed roles with the Kansas City Lyric Opera and KU Opera, and has sung solo for the Lawrence Chamber Orchestra, the Trinity Consort and the St. Charles Art & Music Festival’s Opera Institute. He sang the national anthem at a Chicago Bears game with a large men’s chorus during his undergraduate days at the Wheaton Conservatory of Music.
“That was a huge crowd,” he recalled, “but I don’t think I’ve ever sung solo in front of more than about 500 people.”
Although Winters doesn’t have much time to attend basketball games these days, he remains a loyal fan of the Jayhawks and couldn’t be more excited to kick off Saturday’s game in song.
“I watch every game on TV. I even live-blog most games on a KU fan site that I frequent,” he said. “Ashley and I sing the Rock Chalk Chant to our son every night before bed time. Cooper loves to sing along and provides the big drum beat before the quick section at the end. It's pretty great.”