Features / BBC scout impressed by ‘talented’ isles singers
IT’S NOT every day that local musicians get the opportunity to audition for a huge national TV show, so there was a palpable air of nervousness and excitement in Mareel on Sunday night for the monthly singer-songwriter evening.
Samantha Heeler, a producer on BBC One’s phenomenally successful vocal talent show ‘The Voice’, was in the audience to scout what Shetland had to offer in this respect.
The monthly singer-songwriter evenings – organised by local musician Sheila Henderson – have proved very successful in its own right, with good audience numbers regularly turning out since they first started a couple of years ago.
But for this particular one the mere mention of a rep from The Voice being in attendance had attracted an audience of around 200 people to witness no less than 23 local singers perform – all hoping their voice will be the one to “click” with Samantha and that they will find themselves on stage in London in front of illustrious panel members such as Tom Jones and Kylie Minogue.
“I’m delighted with the turnout both of singers and audience”, Sheila told me. “It’s great that for this one we also happen to have a lot of students home as well, so there’s plenty for Sam to see music-wise.”
She’s right: singers of all ages and genres have turned out for this one – some already established on the local scene, others clearly very new to it.
Everyone on the night gets just one song to illustrate what they do best and impress our VIP guest. However, if the decision were simply down to local audience reaction alone, then every one of them would stand a fighting chance from what I see.
“We’ve never been to Shetland before,” Samantha tells me, as she takes notes and films yet another performer on stage. “So we thought it was about time we did pay a visit to see what you’ve got here.
“It takes a whole year to put the show together and we see around 40,000 possible participants each time, so it’s a large scale effort that’s for sure.”
So has she been impressed by what she’s seen here so far? “Yes indeed. I’m delighted that so many talented folk took the time out to showcase here tonight. As always it’s going to be a very tough job drawing up the final list of who will actually appear on the show.”
So it will simply have to be a wait and see scenario for our Shetland hopefuls. If nothing else comes out of it, however, Sheila herself hopes that with so many people having turned out for this particular singer-songwriter night they will maybe come back again in the future. “That would be a good result in itself,” she smiles.
Davie Gardner
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