Pop Music, Opera All The Same to Quincy's 'Miss Millennium'

One has to look sharp and move fast to corner Heather Schmid, Quincy's rising young pop music artist and opera singer these days.She has been on the road ever since she was crowned Miss Millennium in a beauty and talent pageant in Edmonton, Alta, last summer. The tour, which will last until September, will have taken her to 30 states, performing in malls and clubs and the Mecca of every entertainer -- Las Vegas.

"We did regular shows in different hotels in Las Vegas," said Schmid the other day during a whirlwind visit to her hometown of Quincy. "We did the Aladdin, the New York-New York, the Venetian, the MGM Grand..." At the same time, she was cutting her second CD El Records, run by Ernie Lake, a New York producer who has been twice nominated for Grammys.

Although Schmid is a classical trained opera singer (Boston University '00 with a music major), she was recording pop songs in Boston when the Miss Millennium opportunity opened up. She won the contest held in Edmonton Mall, the largest in the world, competing against women from as far away as Germany, Puero Rico, Bosnia, and Lithuania.

Schmid has lent her three-octave range to productions of "La Boheme" and "The Marriage of Figaro" as well as "Oklahoma" and "The Sound of Music". When the tour is finished in September, she hopes to be signed by a major recording label.

"I'd like to be able to open for another artist," she said, "while I write my own stuff. These days, I want my music to make people move, but, more than ever, to send a positive message. "I've got a lot to say about women's issues." But if an opportunity in opera -- like "La Boheme", her favorite -- should present itself, she said she'd jump at the chance.

-Quincy Sun