By David Pasivirta
This past Wednesday at Fernie Secondary School’s Traynor Hall the first annual Fernie’s Best Singer contest was held.
It featured 16 singers from the Fernie area, including some talented young people from Sparwood, and singers as young as eight-years-old, as well as many with more life experience than that, including a few local parents.
The audience was treated to a wide variety of songs, some with both acoustic guitar and piano accompaniment and some with karaoke tracks to support the singers.
There were a number of brave young singers from Isabella Dicken Elementary School and they performed very well. The judges had a difficult time deciding who should advance to the final round which consisted of a surprising ‘sing-off’ where each of the final four had to sing another song of their choosing, but that they had not prepared for the contest. In the end, the judges were unanimous in their selection of the first and second place singers as they displayed excellence in each of the categories judged including tuning, vocal tone, stage presence and audience response. Some of the judges noted that while some of the performances were excellent all around, the selected winners showed exceptional vocal strength as well as having an excellent holistic performance. The top three singers were Maria Landa, Claire Bernier and Liam Faucher.
Maria and Claire will be singing at the regional finals for Kootenays’ Best Singer in Cranbrook on June 1.