NORTHRIDGE : Chatsworth Grad to Sing for President

Those on the other side of the spotlight are usually faceless, and Farah Alvin can easily close her eyes and forget them while singing her lucky song, “Johnny One-Note.”

Next Thursday at the Kennedy Center in Washington the faces in the audience will be harder to blink away--those of the President and First Lady, especially.

“I’m incredibly nervous, and I’m sure I will be until the moment I go onstage,” Alvin said.

The 17-year-old from Northridge was recently named one of 20 Presidential Scholars in the Arts, and will receive $3,000 and a medallion as proof. But it’s the performance she’s most thrilled about.

The Kennedy Center, after all. Not to mention the audience members.

The Presidential Scholarship--awarded to a handful of the most promising high school seniors in several disciplines--is the most recent in a year when Alvin’s lifetime of work has begun paying off.

The recent Chatsworth High School graduate also starred in the Alex Theatre’s “Fame--the Musical,” this year, performed for Grammy award nominees with the Grammy All-American Choir, and was the only student out of 6,000 to be honored in the pop singing category by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.

It hasn’t always been so easy though. Besides being the hand model for the famous “E.T.” glowing-finger movie poster (artist parents John and Andrea create the posters), the parts and gigs have been tough to come by, though Alvin said she always knew she’d be a performer and Broadway has long been her dream.

In Hollywood, they get 18-year-olds to play 14-year-olds and at 14, Alvin looked, spoke, sang and acted like someone at least old enough to vote.

Casting and booking agents loved her powerful and mature voice, but as Alvin said, “If you heard a 12-year-old was singing . . . would you go?”

She looked too old to play a kid and was too young to play an adult. So, she sang the old Cole Porter classics she loved and learned to accept rejection.

“I learned more from going to auditions and not getting the part than I think I would have in years of working,” she said.

Eventually, people did go to see the 12-year-old’s own cabaret show, and she landed a few jobs singing for television and doing backup vocals on a Kenny Loggins album.

Then, this past year, as mother Andrea puts it, “She kind of grew into the material she was playing,” and people started paying attention.

Now, at 17, Alvin is doing one-woman shows at Los Angeles clubs like Cinegrill. She has agents and publicists, and has her sights on New York and Broadway before the end of the year.

And she has the Clintons and the Kennedy Center.

Though she’s never nervous once she gets on stage, Alvin said she’ll stick with “My Funny Valentine” next week in Washington--a song she’s sung for years and figures she could pull off even with a few butterflies in her stomach.