Bruins anthem auditions hit high note, echo through TD Garden

BOSTON --Danielle Griggs remembered the first time she was supposed to sing the national anthem at TD Garden.

"Our [high school] girls' varsity basketball team made it to the states [at TD Garden] and I was always their singer and I was supposed to be here," she said. "I got sick and didn't get to do it."
Griggs, now a freelance writer who runs an arts non-profit in addition to her singing career, could have another chance at reaching her goal.
She was one of 52 singers taking part in an audition at TD Garden on Wednesday to replace Rene Rancourt as the anthem singer for the Boston Bruins. Rancourt retired at the end of last season after 40 years of singing before Bruins games.

"I would just be over the moon," she said of the second chance she's getting, and added that being chosen "would be so cool, because my uncles are such huge Bruins fans."
The singers on hand ranged from veteran professional singers to people who sing as a side gig, with the youngest contestant 10-year-old Sienna Gattinella.
From more than 600 submissions to replace Rancourt, 52 were invited to Wednesday's audition.
After an assessment by judges from the Bruins organization, the group will be cut to a final roster of about 25 singers, who will sing the anthem on a rotating basis.
None of the singers tried to imitate Rancourt, refraining from using his trademark fist pumps or wearing a gold vest. One competitor did wear a gold-sequined dress, however.

The decision to avoid mimicking Rancourt probably had to do with respect for the Boston icon.
"I think if you do the fist pump, that makes you look like a [jerk]," said Kennedy Elsey, a Boston-area radio host who has sung the anthem at TD Garden and other sports venues in the past. "You think about doing something because you want to stand out, but I feel like that was just so innately his."
Todd Angilly has heard Rancourt sing plenty of times. He's a probation officer by day and during the winter is a bartender at one of the premium bars at TD Garden.
Trained as an opera singer from his time at the New England Conservatory, he has performed for all five Boston professional sports teams, and he also was among those competing to replace Rancourt.
"Doing something like this," Angilly said, "being able to be down on the ice like I have and to have done the anthems, and to hear the crowd response, to know that you're pretty much the last thing before the game starts, you make it or break it, you're firing these people up."