Niantic’s musical Rossi sisters enjoy sharing the stage
Pair sing and play guitar, piano, ukulele at local venues and festivals
East Lyme — For 13-year-old Rosie and 10-year-old Annie Rossi, performing together as sisters is a big advantage.
Even with friends, you don’t always know everything about them, they said, but the two Niantic sisters are able to guess each other’s thoughts while playing music.
“Annie and I will just look at each other and know what we’re thinking — skip to the next chorus,” Rosie said during a recent interview at their Niantic home.
The sisters have been performing together as The Rossi Sisters for the past few years — playing guitar, piano, ukulele and singing and coming up with harmonies — at local venues and festivals.
Rosie and Annie sang “God Bless America” at a Boston Red Sox game and at a Hartford Yard Goats game, and they also sang the National
“Annie and I will just look at each other and know what we’re thinking — skip to the next chorus.” ROSIE ROSSI
Anthem for the Harlem Wizards.
Their performances at local venues include the Niantic Main Street Holiday Stroll, Celebrate East Lyme, Jingle Bell 5K, the Hamburg Fair, Nightingale’s Café, Lake of Isles, ICRV radio and McCook’s Park.
Rosie’s love for music was sparked when she saw a “Celtic Woman” special on TV when she was younger and couldn’t take her eyes off the screen and started to dance around like the fiddler on the show, her mother Donna Dakin Rossi said. Her parents first bought her a toy violin and then later got her violin lessons.
When Rosie’s younger sister, Annie, got older, she developed the same interest in music as Rosie. Rosie said that when she taught her sister some of the music she knew, her sister’s face lit up.
In addition to playing the violin, the sisters started playing on a piano that was a gift from their aunt. The two had their first performance together when they played a song from “Wicked” at a Niantic
Center School arts event.
“At that point it was kind of an epiphany, and we were like, ‘I think we might have something here,’ and so we worked a lot, and we picked up the guitar, and then we picked up the ukulele, and the bass,” said Rosie.
“Then we started taking lessons for things, and it just took off from there,” Annie said.
“We kind of knew that that was what we wanted to do, and when we’re performing alone I don’t feel the same excitement,” said Rosie.
“It feels kind of empty,” Annie agreed.
“It feels empty without Annie performing and just feels kind of bland, but when she’s there it just feels complete,” Rosie said.
To prepare for their performances, the two plan out a schedule to stay organized and then pick out songs that fit their voices — Annie is an alto and Rosie is a soprano.
They said they then figure out who is going to play which instrument and who is going to do harmony and melody on which parts. They put their own spin on the songs they choose, sometimes slowing them down. They said they prefer soft songs, and mostly acoustic, pop and country.
The sisters also enjoy musicals and acting and dancing, and performed a duet in “Annie,” with Rosie as Annie and Annie as Sandy the dog.
Donna said that while her own mother is seeing her dreams come true in the girls, she and her husband were both athletes and not musically inclined. While they drive the girls around and give them music lessons, the girls are doing the music all on their own.
She said there’s a nice backand-forth and sharing between her two daughters, with Rosie teaching her little sister, and Annie openly receiving the lessons from her older sister.
The two sisters want to continue performing and someday would like to have their own record label, be on Broadway and do “anything and everything musical,” said Rosie. But she said it’s always nice to have a back-up plan, and their backup plan is to become surgeons.
Rosie said she’s proud of her little sister when she learns the songs, while Annie said she enjoys being taught by her older sister, who understands how she thinks and processes things.
“I kind of feel that when we’re performing together — it kind of feels magical,” Annie said.
“It’s definitely magical,” Rosie added.
More information on The Rossi Sisters is available at https://www.facebook.com/annieandrosie/ and https://www. youtube.com/channel/UCZgwjhREqZ5qUVSNYdH2Sfg.