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Contact: Wes Hagood                                                            44084 Saxony Terrace
Home: (703) 723-1176                                                         Ashburn, VA 20147
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Hagood Win Loudoun Arts Council Award 

Kelley Hagood, 18, a senior at Broad Run High School, won second place in the vocal category of the Loudoun Arts Council Excellence in the Arts Awards competition.  Hagood was also a silver medalist in the 2000 James A. Bland Music Scholarship Competition sponsored by the Sterling Lions Club.  She performed an original song she had written entitled I Can't Breathe. The judges for the arts council were very impressed with her writing and delivery of the song.  The ballad describes a teen girl's feelings when she sees her former boyfriend with his new girlfriend.  Hagood said, " It's a song about feeling discarded."  

Hagood is a founding member of By Chanz, the Ashburn, VA-based teen female vocal group that sings pop music laced with a tinge of R&B.  She wrote the song to record as part of a demonstration CD that By Chanz is preparing to submit to several recording companies in pursuit of a recording contract. 

Last year Hagood's first song, Beat of Your Heart, co-written with schoolmate Cori Harding and Dennis Balin, a Columbia, MD songwriter, won an honorable mention in the Grand Slam Songwriting Contest sponsored by Music Connection magazine of LA and the Sam Ash Music Megastores.  Beat of Your Heart was also highly praised by the judges of the Great American Song Contest who said, "Outstanding melodic qualities throughout this song. Impressive!" 

Hagood and the other members of By Chanz, Sarah Luhrs, 14, Lauren Smallwood, 14, Amanda Szott, 15, and Vanessa Vosteen, 14 will be performing I Can't Breathe and Beat of Your Heart on the children's stage at the Leesburg Flower and Garden Festival on April 21, 2001 at 1:00 PM.  

In addition to performing several familiar cover tunes, By Chanz will also sing numerous original songs written by members of the group including What, What Did You Say? written by Smallwood and Hagood and Forget About You written by Szott, the vocal group's newest member.  By Chanz will also debut an original song entitled The Way I Feel Tonight written by Todd Wright, the talented pop songwriter and founding member of the local band The Excentrics.  Wright said, "the song is about a young teen girl enjoying a romance of the moment and not thinking about the future." 

By Chanz recently performed before a packed house at The Upper Room of Leesburg, a family-oriented coffee house.  Prior to that, By Chanz performed at First Night Leesburg and at The Planet Club, a teen night club in Chantilly.  By Chanz was featured in a March 26, 2001 television news story on Loudoun Channel 3 and one of their songs, Beat of Your Heart, has been featured all month on a Fairtfax Channel 10 comedy show called The Nooz. 

To learn more about By Chanz and see additional photographs, go to their web site at www.bychanz.com