Wisconsin's Vitto Brown has quite the skill set: Basketball and baritone

NEW YORK —  Picture this: Vitto Brown is 5 years old, and he’s dressed as a zebra. He’s part of a local performance of Broadway’s The Lion King near his home in Bowling Green, Ohio, with no songs to sing and no lines to speak.

But he won’t stop crying.

“He did not want to be on stage that night,” said Sheila Brown, Vitto’s mother, laughing. “Now, every night up to that point, we had practiced and practiced, and he was fine with this little role, but for some reason that night he was just irritated. And I remember he was just crying all through the performance up on the stage in front of everybody.”

Said Brown himself: “It was like pulling teeth, trying to get me on that stage.”

But that brief phase — call it stage fright or simply a moment of stubbornness — didn’t last long. Brown loved to sing too much not to perform in the future. The whole family loved to sing; Sheila got her children started young, singing nursery rhymes to and with Brown and his siblings as they grew up. By the time Brown turned 7, his mother realized he had a beautiful, rich voice.

The rest of the country has now come to the same realization — for some, it came when CBS played a clip of Brown singing March’s iconic song, “One Shining Moment,” last week. Plenty of others realized it earlier, remembering Brown from three years ago, when he, along with three other student-athletes, sang the national anthem before playing alongside his Wisconsin teammates at the Final Four in Indianapolis.

“That was probably a top-two or top-three moment of college for me, maybe of my life,” Brown said Thursday. “There were 75, 80 thousand people there and millions watching at home; that was in the back of my mind. But to get to start that song off … it was just such a blessing.”

At that point in his basketball career, Brown wasn’t playing much, averaging just over a point and six minutes per game. But his teammates insisted and predicted (correctly) that he’d be an integral piece of this program someday — and not just because of those dulcet tones and the handful of times he and his family would sing the national anthem before Wisconsin home games over the course of his four-year career.

Now, Brown is no longer seldom-used but rather a starter and key contributor for this year’s Sweet 16 squad, averaging 6.8 points and 3.9 rebounds for the Badgers, who will face Florida on Friday for a spot in the East regional final. And he’s perhaps even more crucial on the defensive end; Brown made the game-winning defensive stop to secure Wisconsin’s upset of No. 1 overall seed Villanova last weekend.

But you can’t quite separate Brown the basketball player from Brown the baritone. The two sides of Brown come together well, much like a two-part harmony.

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Singing actually comes easier to Brown than basketball. He’s never nervous to perform, whether a teammate asks him to belt out a song on the spot or when he’s about to sing the national anthem before a big game.

“Music is therapy for Vitto,” Sheila said, “because Vitto's the type of kid who's super analytical and highly intelligent, right. … With basketball, I think he overanalyzes, overthinks sometimes. But with singing, he knows he's good at it — and he knows he's good at it because he's experienced what that success looks like. He'll sing, and people will be weeping, visibly weeping in the audience — some of the church performances we've done have moved people to tears on many occasions. He’s seen the power and the emotion and the universality of music and how you don't have to know what I'm singing in terms of language. But if your voice is beautiful, it cuts through any language barrier that might exist because I'm hearing the beauty of your instrument, which is your voice. He knows he has that. That is something that is a God-given talent that he possesses and he knows that it's a powerful, powerful instrument that he has.

“Knowing that gives him that confidence.”

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Brown’s father, Angelo, said he’s noticed his son plays best when he’s singing frequently. During Brown’s time at Wisconsin, he hasn’t had time to join any formal singing groups, but he has sung at weddings, parties and funerals in recent years. Angelo thinks perhaps the confidence his son gained from those vocal performances translated to on-court success this year and last year, as Brown’s role has increased.

“To have another positive outlet like that where you can go in and practice, sing, perform, work on songs — that kind of stuff it really does keep you in a positive frame of mind and working on things that are constructive,” Angelo said. “In that sense, they do kind of help each other. “

Sheila and Angelo have performed countless times alongside their children — Brown, his older brother Xavier and older sister Carla. They make up a group called The Shades of Brown, which they began back when they were the praise team at their local church. They even wrote their own songs, recorded them and sold CDs back in 2012.

Like Brown, his brother got his start in music young, performing in dinner theater shows during Black History month planned by their mother in her role in the office of multicultural affairs at Bowling Green State University. During Brown’s infamous zebra performance, Xavier — always the more outspoken one — was starring as Simba.

Brown’s older siblings still dabble in music, even outside of the family’s group performances. Xavier produces beats and musical tracks for songs for other people; Carla is a lyricist, and the two of them have worked together to produce some songs.

Angelo, who joked that the kids call him the weak link in the family’s singing group, helps out, too. Both parents help with composition and production; they have been writing songs together since the '90s. They understand and value the creativity and freedom that comes along with music, and they see that helping their youngest both as a singer and a now as a breakout basketball player with aspirations of playing professionally.

“When he's out there performing on stage, that gym is the same thing,” Angelo said. “When you're on that court, if you look at it as something like a stage, you're not so uptight. That's when he plays at his best. He's just relaxed, not worrying about what the coach is thinking and just playing.”

As Angelo pointed out, Brown’s self-confidence clearly now extends into basketball — but it’s taken awhile to get to this point. Angelo said his youngest son “played hot potato” with the basketball his freshman year of high school. He’d made varsity, but he was too nervous to shoot the ball in games.

“I tried to offer him money,” Angelo said. “I was like, ‘If you just shoot a three, I will give you $20.’ He wouldn't even shoot a three — all through his freshman year he never shot a three. As a matter of fact, I don't think he shot a three his sophomore year, either, so I never had to pay him.”

Angelo laughed.

“He was very timid,” he said. “But he would get rebounds. He would block shots and do a lot of stuff, but he just would not shoot the ball. I think it was part of being timid and a little bit of nervous not wanting to mess up.”

Eventually, once he became an upperclassman, Brown got more comfortable on the offensive end of the floor, which meant he actually shot the ball. And he played AAU ball, which helped get him noticed by multiple Big Ten programs. Brown chose Wisconsin, a place he knew he would force him to be a bit more aggressive and where he could grow as a player.

As if following a script, Brown has done just that, developing from a shy reserve player who didn’t even attempt a single three-pointer his first two collegiate seasons to an important contributor on both ends for these Badgers.

And if things continue to go well the rest of this month, Brown could become the first player ever featured in One Shining Moment for both his on-court performance and his voice. It’d certainly be a special moment, but one that’d be well-deserved — twice over.

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