Becky Sawicki earns honors for making music

CORNWALL — There was only one applicant for the Marie Baum Scholarship this year. But the Board of Selectmen, which administers the award to a college-bound Cornwall student with an interest in music, said they couldn’t have asked for a better candidate.

Rebecca Sawicki, better known as Becky, is about to graduate from Housatonic Valley Regional High School, where she was a force in the music program, as she was at Cornwall Consolidated School (CCS).

She will soon head to Wagner College on Staten Island, where she plans to major in music education.

Becky said her love of music began at the age of 3, when she started piano lessons with Anne Chamberlain. It was in the fifth grade at Cornwall Consolidated School that she took up the flute. During her middle-school years there, she and three friends formed a flute choir.

She became one of those music students always willing to pick up a new instrument and fill a gap in a band. In eighth grade, it was the French horn and upright bass. At Housatonic,  it was the alto sax. Somewhere along the way she learned the piccolo.

Of course, she’s been in band and chorus at both schools, and regional groups such as Berkshire Band and the Northern Regional Flute Choir. She is the band president at Housatonic and volunteers in the CCS music department.

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