By Khalida Sarwari
To her relatives around the world she is known as “little bird.” It’s a nickname she wears proudly as the second songbird in her family, following in the footsteps of her great-grandfather, who was famously known in certain regions of the Philippines as “the bird.”
And on Saturday night in Los Gatos, 16-year-old Casey Rico soared to the top to be crowned the winner in the first ever South Bay Teen Idol competition.
The song that wowed a panel of judges and the audience alike? Casey’s rendition of “Good Morning Baltimore” from the musical Hairspray, which she performed as part of the competition’s soundtracks theme. With every high note, Casey elicited applause and enthusiastic cheers from the standing-room-only audience at the Addison-Penzak Jewish Community Center. Following her performance, all four judges commented that Casey’s voice was “beautiful,” “seamless” and “pure.”
“Your voice is stunning,” said Gaby Symons, the lead vocalist of the teen rock group Y I YELL.
“You have an amazing, amazing talent,” Jeffrey Benson, the director of choral activities at the School of Music and Dance, told Casey.
The Silver Creek High School junior took home the contest’s top prize: a $2,500 scholarship for herself and $500 for her school. Casey credited the win to the friendly environment created by her fellow contestants.
“It was just really fun to work with everybody,” a flushed Casey said afterward, holding several bouquets of flowers in her arms. “I had a great time.”
Rounding out the top three were Sanjana Shukla, 16, a Saratoga High junior, who won the $1,500 runner-up prize, and Dana Cullinane, 16, a junior at Los Gatos High, who nabbed $500 for placing third.
Judges raved about Sanjana’s rendition of “I Am Changing” from Dreamgirls, calling her voice “excellent” and her performance “phenomenal.” They were equally complimentary of Dana’s performance of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl.
“You need to be on Broadway; you have a gorgeous voice,” said Symons.
Backstage, in between posing for photos, Dana fanned her face and tried to catch her breath. Her mother, Nan Cullinane, a mortgage broker, held Dana’s flowers and recalled how much of a “nervous wreck” both she and her daughter had been before the show.
“I thought all the kids did a great job,” she said. “Contests are hard; I would not have wanted to be one of the judges.”
The judges, which included Stephen Guggenheim, resident musical director for the Retrodome in San Jose, and Cynthia Brian, an author and internationally acclaimed speaker and acting coach, would have likely agreed with Nan Cullinane’s assessment. Though the competition was styled after American Idol, none of the judges offered a single word of negative feedback to any of the 10 contestants, at one point prompting Scott Budman, a reporter at KNTV who served as the master of ceremonies, to ask, “Isn’t one of you supposed to be mean?”
There appeared to be no division among the crowd of nearly 400, either. Cheryl Taylor of San Jose compared the process–which consisted of voting for the contestant with the best singing ability, stage presence and group interaction using a colored strip that matched the color each contestant appeared with on stage–to choosing a favorite ice cream flavor.
“I’m amazed at the talent we have here in the South Bay,” Taylor said. “The talent was incredible.”
She and others marveled at how well the event was organized and produced. For Diana Pleasant, a godmother to Dana and former theater director at Los Gatos High School, where she instructed both Dana and fellow contestant Serena Koo, the choreography was one of the show’s biggest highlights.
The singers performed two pieces as a group, “Seasons of Love” from Rent and “A Brand New You” from 13.
“It was done so well,” she said. “They certainly found really good talent and they presented it in a first-class setting.”
South Bay Teen Idol kicked off with auditions in January and was followed by a semifinal round prior to the finals on Saturday night. The 10 finalists, which were narrowed down from a pool of 60 contestants, also included Serena Koo of Los Gatos, a junior at Los Gatos High School; Brandon Farmer of San Jose, an eighth-grader at Accelerated Christian Academy, a home school program; Annie Hunt of San Jose, a freshman at Archbishop Mitty; Haley Henson of Sunnyvale, a junior at Presentation; Kalpana Chinnappan of San Jose, a junior at Leland; Daniel Stromfeld, a senior at Leigh; and Samantha Gorjanc of Saratoga, an eighth-grader at Sacred Heart Catholic School and the show’s youngest contestant.
