FORT BELVOIR, Va. (Army News Service) - A percussionist with the D.C. National Guard’s 257th Army Band is the second Military Idol.
Spc. Vicki Golding used the contrasting styles of Stevie Wonder and Barbra Streisand to win the military singing contest Nov. 5 at Wallace Theater. But the sounds were all Golding’s.
“I think she’s probably a student of Streisand in that she has the same brilliant technique,” Military Idol artistic director Victor Hurtado said of Golding’s version of “The Way We Were.” “She stayed true to the piece, but I still heard Vicki Golding doing it. She threw a few riffs in there, which comes naturally to her. It was really wonderful.”
Earlier in the program, Golding had the audience dancing in their seats during her rendition of Wonder’s “I Wish.” Hurtado, who doubles as director of the U.S. Army Soldier Show, said the contrasting styles worked fabulously.
Golding followed third-place finisher Sgt. Quanda Brown’s rousing rendition of Chaka Khan’s “Tell Me Something Good” with the more sedate “The Way We Were” to close the competition that began on 29 Army installations around the world.
“It brought everybody back to a focus for the end of the show,” Hurtado said. “Sometimes less is more. And a beautiful instrument, just in its simplicity without all the bells and whistles, was a really brilliant, brilliant thing to do.”
That was the plan for Golding, 35, a native of Brisbane, Australia, who studied as a tuba player and vocalist at the Queensland Conservatory of Music.
“There was a bit of a strategy to pick a song that was fun and upbeat and easy to listen to like ‘I Wish,’ but I also enjoy performing songs like that because they’re more fun to perform,” she said. “The audience gets more involved and the feedback from the audience helps you drive the performance and make it more enjoyable.
“If you’re enjoying yourself, the audience will enjoy themselves. And if the audience is enjoying themselves, you enjoy yourself more and you relax more. It just rolls that way.”
Golding returned to her emotional roots with Streisand’s tune. She recalled a long-distance telephone company’s television commercial that used the song during her childhood.
“It was about an old man in Greece who gets a phone call from his family in Australia and he’s crying, and I always cried at that ad,” Golding said. “From then on, that song always stuck in my head and made me really emotional. I felt that would come through when I sang it.
“I showed that I could do the upbeat and have fun, but then I showed that I could do the somewhat more technically demanding song, such as the Streisand number. It was a contrast of showing that I can have fun, but I can show vocal control and emotion.”
A former member of the Australian Army’s reserve and active-duty bands, Golding met her husband, Staff Sgt. Jason Morgan, while the U.S. Army Band was touring Australia.
Staff Sgt. Angelo Johnson of Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, was the Military Idol runner-up. He displayed a wide vocal range by singing Oleta Adams’ “Get Here” during the semifinals, followed by Mariah Carey’s “Hero” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in the finals.
“He’s almost three or four people within the same performance, and typically that bothers me,” Hurtado said. “But he has such a great handle on all of them that it’s like a really great movie, like vocal schizophrenia, you know?
“It’s really wonderful,” Hurtado continued. “He’s got wonderful talents and wonderful control, and he knows how to play them.”
“I love everything about music and I’ve just been waiting so patiently for the opportunity to actually be able to express what I can do,” said Johnson, 28, a native of Miami. “I felt as though I did my best. I had to actually get in my zone because during rehearsals it was hard for me to grasp what I wanted to convey to the audience, but I feel like I hit it.”
Brown, of Fort Lee, Va., finished third. The self-proclaimed “most untrained voice” among the 13 finalists, she sang Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary” during the semifinals and Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and Khan’s “Tell Me Something Good” in the finals.
“I’m just shocked and still in disbelief,” Brown, 32, a native of Des Moines, Iowa, said of reaching the finals. “I guess I don’t give myself the credit the others give me.”
The Military Idol program, based on the format of FOX Television’s “American Idol,” likely will return next year with a new name. The performers’ goal, however, will remain the same: to become a singing ambassador for Army Entertainment, a division of the U.S. Army Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command in Alexandria, Va.
The finalists were selected by Military Idol judges Jack L. Tilley, the 12th Sergeant Major of the Army; Debra Byrd, vocal coach and arranger for “American Idol;” and Grammy award-winning country music artist Michael Peterson, best known for “I am a Soldier” and “From Here to Eternity.” Sgt. Major William Joe Gainey, the senior enlisted advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, served as a guest judge for the finals.
Miss Virginia 2006 Adrianna Sgarlata was the emcee for finals week, which began Oct. 30 with two closed-set shows taped for webcast via streaming video on Army Knowledge Online. The winner was selected by online voting on AKO for two hours following the final show Nov. 4.
“I know they’re going to continue it under another name, but I think this is one of the best programs the Army has ever had to offer,” said Brown, a 13-year veteran Soldier. “The screening process that they did to get the 13 of us here was incredible. Everybody here, I think, should be making CDs.
“We do so much for our country as it is. To me, I feel like this is a little reward for us – to be TDY and just to do what we’ve been blessed with, our gifts, it’s wonderful,” Brown said.
Golding credited Brown for inspiring her to win.
“I have to give props to Sergeant Brown,” Golding said. “She told me ‘this is your year’ and ‘I’m going to do everything to make you win.’ She was stunned to get into the finals, but she has so much raw talent and her presence is like no one else’s here. She has this quality that just connects with the audience.”
“She has a humble brilliance,” Hurtado agreed. “Quanda Brown is one of those people who doesn’t know what she has, but when you tell her what she has, she uses it. She, by far, made the most exponential jump and we are so grateful of what she did.”
Military Idol was sponsored by the Armed Forces Vacation Club, a program that offers Department of Defense-affiliated personnel condominium-resort vacation packages around the world. Sharon Schlessinger, whose husband recently deployed to Iraq for the second time, won an AFVC package through a sweepstakes run in conjunction with Military Idol.