Early Start Pays Off for Torrance Teen Singer : Music: When Shameka Bell was a preschooler, her mother put her into a chorus. Now 16, she has won a first prize at the Music Center Spotlight Awards.

When Shameka Bell was a preschooler, her mother placed her in a chorus for tots at the Park Windsor Baptist Church in Los Angeles.

Apparently, Mom is quite the talent scout.

Bell, now a 16-year-old living in Torrance, is fresh from winning a $5,000 first-place prize in the Music Center Spotlight Awards, a prestigious performing arts competition for high school seniors.

In the contest’s final rounds, held last week, Bell took the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles and sang the pop tune “Man in the Mirror.” Backed by a 30-piece orchestra, she won over an audience of 3,000 and--more important, perhaps--impressed a three-member panel of judges.

“We thought she was great,” said singer Tony Martin, one of the judges. “She had a wonderful sense of humor and a sort of go-for-broke style. She just effervesced.”

Said blues singer Joe Williams, another of the judges: “She chose a very difficult piece, about a very personal thing, and she did it with great conviction and feeling.”

For Bell, it was a triumph of mind over matter.

“When I got on stage, it hit me that this was really happening,” said the senior at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. “There were a lot of people, and I mean a lot of people. But I really wanted it.”

The Spotlight Awards, established in 1988, showcase high school performing arts talent from Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, Ventura and San Bernardino counties. As Bell’s case illustrates, the competition can offer youngsters a burst of big-time exposure--and a useful financial boost.

Monday night marked the finals of six Spotlight competitions ranging from Classical Instrumental to Pop/Musical Comedy Vocal--the category won by Bell. The six winners received $5,000 each, and the six runners-up were awarded $2,500, culminating a contest that began with 300 performers last fall.

Bell sang her way through a preliminary round in December, survived semifinal competition in February, and on Monday entered the final with Trisha Rapier, a 17-year-old San Clemente High School student who sang “Stepsister’s Lament” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella.”

Bell says that before singing her tune, she had been battling a cold and a case of butterflies. But she nursed her voice with throat lozenges and tea. And the butterflies, she says, dissolved in the thrill of appearing on the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stage.

“I was nervous until I got on stage,” she said. “Then it was like one of my dreams, me being a vocalist singing at the Dorothy Chandler. It was very exciting.”

The crowd of 3,000 included high school students, relatives of the contestants and patrons of the Music Center, which supports the Los Angeles Philharmonic and other local performing arts organizations. Providing the accompaniment was Jack Elliott and the New American Orchestra, a big band made up of symphonic, jazz and pop musicians.

Judging Bell’s category were Martin, Williams and Ginny Mancini, the wife of composer Henry Mancini and the founder of the Society of Singers, an organization that provides relief to needy singers.

Earlier phases of the competition exposed contestants to other big names in the music world. For the semifinals, performers in Bell’s category received free instruction from Seth Riggs, a Los Angeles vocal coach who has worked with Michael Jackson, Bette Midler, Stevie Wonder and Madonna.

Riggs says Bell needed work on developing a smooth transition to higher musical ranges, a technique he calls the “Streisand blend.” But the Torrance teen-ager showed an ability to learn and considerable raw talent, he says.

“She has wonderful potential,” Bell said. “She had a very good gospel style.”

That style emerged in large part at the High School for the Arts, where Bell’s courses include gospel choir, jazz choir, music theory and ear training. Her earliest proving ground, though, was Park Windsor Church, where her mother placed her in a young children’s choir at the age of 3. For the last two years, Bell has sung regularly in the church’s youth choir.

“Her talent really far exceeds anyone else in that choir,” said Johnnie Taylor, the church’s choir director and pianist. “She can do so many things with her voice, it makes one say: ‘Is this coming from the same person?’ ”

Spotlight organizers say Bell and other contestants will probably receive more public exposure as a result of their performances Monday. The finals were taped by the TV show “Entertainment Tonight” and attended by a producer of the “Tonight Show,” which has invited Spotlight contestants on the air in the past and is said to be considering doing so again this year.

Bell says she has no immediate plans to parlay her Spotlight win into a professional singing career. She ranks a college degree as her first priority, saying she hopes to use her $5,000 award for tuition.

But Bell says professional singing is her long-term goal, and she considers the Spotlight Award win a major confidence builder. “I’ve been in competitions before,” Bell said, “but nothing as prestigious, and never against so many good people. It was a big boost.”