Dante de Blasio Is Off Vocal Rest
Maternity wards are inherently stressful places. But on the night of September 3, 1997, the stakes were especially high for expectant parents. A few weeks earlier, the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music had decided that the first local baby born on the school’s hundredth birthday would receive a lifetime of free music lessons. The anniversary date was September 4th. About ninety babies are born in Brooklyn every day. To locate the winner, B.K.C.M. employees called hospitals around the borough until they found their lucky newborn, at Brooklyn Methodist: a little boy by the name of Dante de Blasio—yes, relation.
“I was extremely punctual,” de Blasio said the other day, standing by a Knabe piano in the center of a Park Slope loft. “I think it was, like, 12:30 A.M.”
De Blasio, now twenty-nine and six feet three, was setting up for a fund-raiser he’d organized to give back to the Conservatory. It had come about largely out of guilt. “I started taking lessons around age eight, I think—I’ll have to ask my dad,” he said. “I just remember the rage. I was very stubborn and had no musical talent.” (His father, the former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, clarified: “He was positively sour.”) Among piano, guitar, and singing, piano was the worst. “It was the social element,” Dante said. “I did not like being told what to do.” He quit after less than a year.
Time passed, and other pursuits prevailed—debate at Brooklyn Tech (“Teen-agers screaming at each other”), political science at Yale (because of Dad? “God, no”), soccer (“My left knee is busted”). Occasionally, de Blasio felt a musical itch. “There’s a Steinway piano at Gracie Mansion, so I tried to teach myself to play it during the pandemic,” he said. He used a German music app called Flowkey. “I didn’t keep up with it,” he said, as guests streamed into the loft and looked around.
Only recently did de Blasio finally have his come-to-Mozart moment. “I lived with a Whiffenpoof”—a member of Yale’s premier a-capella group—“and he was, like, ‘Let’s see if you can sing.’ We did it for a month, just me and him in our apartment,” he said. Then he remembered his birthright and reached out to the Conservatory. “I had no documentation—my parents didn’t have a certificate,” he said. “I was, like, ‘These people are going to think I’m crazy.’ ”
Chad Cooper, the head of B.K.C.M., thought no such thing. “The Dante story was relayed to me very early in my tenure,” Cooper said. “I knew the lore. When he reached out, I had been waiting by the phone for years. I said, ‘Our word is our bond!’ ” De Blasio soon enrolled in a group singing class, free of charge. “I tried to recruit them to come tonight, but everyone had a thing,” he said, with a shrug.
As more guests arrived, de Blasio, wearing a brightly patterned button-down, a blazer, and dress shoes, sipped a Moscow Mule. “It’s my favorite,” he said. “The other is a White Russian. I’ve been reading a lot about Russia lately.” The bartender, a short woman with bangs, was also a Whiffenpoof, and from New York. Had she been a contender for the B.K.C.M. prize? “I was born in 2002,” she said. What can you do?
A jazz band started playing “Pent Up House,” and de Blasio made the rounds, checking in on his soccer teammates, a group of giggling girls, some Yale buddies, and his dad. “I was extremely aware,” the elder de Blasio said, of the centenary contest. “It had been in the local paper, and they were really pumping it up.” He took a swig of his beer. “I remember vividly that at 12:20 my heart sank. I was, like, There’s no way we’re going to win after this. We’ve blown it.”
As it turns out, they had blown it. As devoted members of B.K.C.M. called around to hospitals, they found an infant who had been born just minutes before Dante. “They got hold of the first baby born after midnight, and apparently the mom was, like, not interested,” Cooper said, in disbelief.
“They must’ve thought it was a scam,” Dante said.
“You were the alternate!” Bill said. “I didn’t know until tonight that someone turned it down.”
Toward the end of the evening, the jazz pianist, a dapper man named Lafayette, took the microphone to thank each member of the band. “And where’s that fellow who had all those lessons?” he asked. The young de Blasio raised his hand, to whoops.
Someone from the crowd shouted, “Sing!” De Blasio shook his head sheepishly. A chant began: “Sing! Sing! Sing!” Fervent fans awaiting, he strutted toward the piano and raised the mike to his mouth. ♦