Turlock school teacher sings with Michael Bublé — again. Second time a sweet surprise
Not too many once-in-a-lifetime experiences become twice-in-a-lifetime experiences. But then not too many people have the good luck, and singing voice, of Turlock elementary school teacher Diana Fairbanks.
In April 2019, the Modesto native and sixth-grade teacher at Walter M. Brown Elementary School sang with superstar Michael Bublé at his concert in Oakland. Her students even made her a sign to help her get noticed by the Canadian crooner, and it worked. They sang “A Whole New World” together, and Fairbanks thought her 15 minutes of fame were over.
Now, fast-forward two years and one pandemic later and Fairbanks and her husband were off to another Bublé concert, his first tour since the emergence of COVID-19. This time, the show was Sept. 28 in the Save Mart Center in Fresno. And, again, the schoolteacher was picked by the superstar to duet, thanks in part to another homemade sign, another Disney song and a hockey stick.
“I’m just a schoolteacher and just a mom. And was just going to a concert at night. I know how unique it is to get to do it twice. I feel so lucky,” she said.
Fairbanks, who uses her half-hour commute from Modesto to Turlock each morning to sing, never thought she’d get another chance to perform with the four-time Grammy winner — especially because the pandemic has made the practice trickier to pull off. But she and her husband went last week, and on a school night, no less.
They once again had seats in the pit, the front-row standing-only section surrounding the stage. Fairbanks had thought about having her students make another sign. In 2019, the kids drew a picture of Bublé with the words “Can You Show Me the World?” drawn on a poster made to look like a magic carpet.
But with the busy school year, Fairbanks ran out of time and also didn’t want to have to worry about carrying a sign with her all night. She was just going to enjoy the show this time.
Her husband, Jeff Fairbanks, had other plans. He had secretly made his own sign, on a cloth placemat, and held it up behind her whenever the singer came close to them.
The sign read, “She loves singing with you!!” — a reference to his wife’s other duet with the famous entertainer. He also drew in a hockey-stick microphone, a contraption Bublé — a huge ice hockey fan — fashioned so he could continue singing with fans at his show while following COVID protocols.
At one point, Jeff Fairbanks said the singer saw the sign and winked at him.
She sang with Bublé in Oakland
“Since she already sang with him in Oakland in 2019, she was a bit hesitant about trying to get his attention again, but I wasn’t,” Jeff Fairbanks said.
When it came time to pick someone to sing with, the sign must have worked, because the Fairbankses said Bublé walked right over to where they were and stuck out the hockey stick microphone. He asked for her name and where she was from. “Modesto” earned some cheers from the nearby Valley crowd, and then he asked what she wanted to sing.
Mrs. Fairbanks, as her students call her, is also known as a huge Disney fan. For her first impromptu duet with Bublé, she picked the popular song from “Aladdin.” This time around, she went with a song from the Disney movie “Frozen” that she knew the performer loved to sing to his young daughter.
Bublé’s band didn’t know the song “Love Is an Open Door,” but that didn’t stop Fairbanks. She knows the romantic duet begins with the female singer’s part, so she started, a capella, in front of the packed Save Mart Center crowd.
When they finished, Bublé asked her if she knew the song was his favorite, and then told her, “You just made my night.”
The couple aren’t sure the singer knew he’d performed with Mrs. Fairbanks before. But one of his regular backup singers reached out and remembered her, saying “Well played, Mrs. Fairbanks.”
She said she was totally surprised by her husband’s crafty attempt — in the literal and figurative sense — to get her another chance to duet with Bublé. On the drive to Fresno, her husband, who is retired from his job with Modesto Irrigation District, kept teasing her that she needed to have a song ready to sing with him. She mostly ignored him.
“I told him it’s not going to happen. He doesn’t ever sing with people again,” she said. “But he knew how much I loved singing with him the first time. This is a tribute on how much my husband loves me and believes in me. He even used markers to make that poster. It was really sweet.”
A teachable moment for Turlock students
Fairbanks called her second performance with Bublé “just as exciting” and a bit of a “Groundhog Day” experience, down to the people congratulating her from the crowd afterward.
Then it was back home, to bed, and up early to be in front of her class again the next morning. Now, she isn’t sure she could make it a hat trick and sing a third time with the superstar. But, if that doesn’t work out, she still has a duet with Josh Groban on her bucket list.
And, ever the teacher, Mrs. Fairbanks hopes to use her twice-in-a-lifetime experience singing with Bublé as a teachable moment for her students.
“Even though this time didn’t really have anything to do with my students, in a way it did. I continue to teach my students every year to go big and be bold. Even if you make a mistake or someone rejects you, I want them to have that growth mindset,” she said.
While she’s tried, and failed, to audition for “The Voice” and other musical productions, she said she didn’t let it stop her love of singing. She said she still felt nervous singing with him a second time, but did it anyway.
“I want to teach my students to not be afraid and go for it when an opportunity comes up,” she said.
This story was originally published October 8, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
