Sun Sentinel
‘America’s Most Musical Family’
Parishioners at First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale know the Bomparts. There’s Juanita, the mom, her husband, Clinton, and five children who love to sing.
But they rarely perform together. So it may come as a surprise to many to see four of them on national television, competing in a new Nickelodeon series called “America’s Most Musical Family.”
The show, in its third episode on Friday night, will include four Bomparts — mom Juanita and daughters Elizabeth, 18, Savanah 15, and Lexi, 11. Nickelodeon describes them as an “a cappella group that loves Broadway music.” They’ll perform a rendition of “Hallelujah,” the song by Leonard Cohen as rendered by Pentatonix.
Juanita Bompart said Thursday the Plantation family has performed individually at churches, weddings and festivals in South Florida for many years. They made a few videos together to try out for the show.
“We’re all soloists,” said Bompart, who home-schools all the children. “This is the first opportunity for us to sing together. It allowed us to be very creative.”
Bompart said the family loves rhythm and blues and singers Whitney Houston and Celine Dion. But they didn’t always agree on which song to perform on the show.
“We had to decide what would work best for the group, what would represent us well and what would uplift the audience,” she said.
Bompart said she isn’t allowed to discuss further details.
Thirty musical families are set to compete over 12 episodes for the big prize, a recording contract with Republic Records and $250,000 in cash.
Five families perform in each episode. The judges choose their three favorites; then audience members vote for two of those three, who move on to the next round.
Nick Lachey of the boy band 98 Degrees and currently featured as one of the “Sexiest Men Alive” in People Magazine, is the series host. Celebrity judges are singer Ciara, YouTube personality David Dobrik and singer-songwriter Debbie Gibson.
A country-pop duo, Juna N Joey, consisting of siblings Juna and Joey DeFeo of West Palm Beach, performed on the series premiere on Nov. 1, but were eliminated. They sang “Beautiful Crazy,” a country hit by Luke Combs.
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