Get ready, Traverse City Idol is coming to town!
Sponsored by the Grand Traverse Chorus and woven into their high-energy "Saturday Night at the Movies!” shows this Saturday at the Milliken Auditorium, TC Idol features five up-and-coming performers vying for a $500 music scholarship prize. Finalists chosen from the April semi-finals are: Catherine Belcher, Zeky Nadji, Maikel Ragel-Wilson, Eric Ranke and Jamie Treadwell.
Debuting in Traverse City, the American Idol-based competition will feature each singer one at a time between numbers by the Grand Traverse Chorus or ensembles.
Judges for the event will be Chad Hall, interim director for the Cherry Capital Chorus, Phil Murphy, executive director of the Old Town Playhouse and Wendee Wolf-Schlarf, the Traverse City Area Public Schools K-12 music administrator. Audience members will also have a chance to vote.
For Zeky Nadji, a Traverse City West Junior High eighth grade student, the Idol competition is just a stepping stone to the real thing.
"I'm planning on going on American Idol when I'm 16 and old enough,” said Nadji, who sang "Zippity Doo-Dah” at the semi-finals. "I think I did extremely well but there was one part where I was supposed to say the words regularly, speaking, but I forgot to do that.”
Traverse City Idol came about thanks to brainstorming by Grand Traverse Chorus members for an outreach project. Someone heard about another chorus doing this and the group decided to try it. The semi-final event, which was advertised through the schools to junior and senior high school students, drew 15 contestants.
"We were pleased about it because it was the first time doing it,” said Diane Clark, director of the Grand Traverse Chorus. "There was a pretty good variety of ages and styles.”
The endeavor is also an outgrowth of the Sweet Adelines musical outreach called Young Women in Harmony. The goals of that program are to encourage young people in music, including granting scholarships through an associated foundation, and to introduce them to the four-part a cappella harmony of barbershop singing.
"We thought it would be appropriate to make it a musical competition because that way it would give them a goal to work toward,” Clark added.
As in April, finalists will be judged on four components, each worth 25 points: sound, music, expression and showmanship.
The latter two categories were a snap for Eric Ranke, a senior at West Senior High School and a veteran of the school's Chorale and a member of the Chorale-Aires. He sang "Unchained Melody” at the semi-finals and is very excited to participate in the finals.
"It was pretty easy for me because we work on that stuff in choir and I've been in theater,” said Ranke, who plans to study musical theater in college.
"I thought this would be fun and for the scholarship, it would help pay for my voice lessons,” he added of his motive to enter the competition.
Jamie Treadwell, a sophomore at West Senior High School, sings for a hobby and is not in choir and has no training. Treadwell, who sings with her church choir, composes songs and poetry and plays the clarinet and saxophone, presented "My Favorite Things” at the semi-finals.
"I'm in band, that's it; [singing is] a hobby, I would take choir but I chose to take Spanish,” said Treadwell, adding of the semi-finals: "I was really nervous because I didn't know how many people would be competing and how good the rest of the people would be compared to me.”
The "Saturday Night at the Movies!” shows will be presented this Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. in the Milliken Auditorium. Tickets are $10 each and are available at the chorus' web site, www.grandtraversechorus.org, or from any member.