Three ‘Protégé’ finalists – winners all

The grand finals of GMA 7’s “Protégé” singing tilt fielded an all-female trio of determined contenders for the top plum of P4 million worth of prizes. The first number in the “ultimate” musical face-off was a really striking duet performed by Krizza Neri and her mentor, Aiza Seguerra.

Aiza is a folk-pop singer, but she amazed us when she displayed an unusually rich and wide vocal range to make the number truly special. Where did those heretofore unheard notes come from?

For her part, Krizza was able to hold her own and impressed us with her finely-focused singing, which turned out to be the evening’s best, since the other two finalists went more for the “big” belted sound.

The tilt was supposed to focus on the new singers, not their mentors, but we reckon that Aiza’s noteworthy participation in the first duet won extra points for Krizza, who later emerged as the tilt’s top winner.

For her part, Lovely Embuscado (mentored by Jaya) initially came off as less than choice because her name wasn’t “in consonance” with her actual looks. Still, we appreciated the bigness and brassiness of her singing voice.

The problem with the Lovely-Jaya duet was that they chose a song from our “Katy!” musical that wasn’t right for their voices. Jaya, in particular, had a hard time doing justice to the song’s initially dulcet, rather than belted, sound. Later, however, as the song soared and they hit its high notes, they did just fine.

Incidentally, Lovely romped off with two awards – the texters’ choice and “most determined” (as in having had to overcome the biggest challenges) cash awards, and went home richer by P150,000.

For somebody who used to have to skip meals and sing to an “audience” of pigs she used to care for, all those winnings must have been a Godsend!

‘Most determined’ honor

The third finalist, Lirah Bermudez (mentored by Janno Gibbs), was in our view the rightful winner of the “most determined” honor, because she had to cope with the death of her younger brother right after Janno had decided to make her his bet for musical stardom. We recall admiring her at the time for her fierce resolve to remain in contention, despite her painful loss.

In terms of performance in their duet number for the tilt’s finals night, however, the Lirah-Janno tandem was relatively too laid-back, so the impact of their joint performance paled in comparison to the other two pairs’ showing.

In our view, however, the most important part of the finals was each contender’s solo number, since it gave viewer-voters a chance to evaluate their performing abilities without their mentors’ help.

Lovely came through best of all with her full-voiced rendition. But, we weren’t miffed when Krizza was declared the tilt’s ultimate winner, because the good impression her finely-focused singing had made on us earlier in her duet with Aiza still held sway.

In any case, all three were winners, since GMA 7 put them all under a five-year contract. As for the jurors, their showing was less than winning, because some of them hedged, hemmed and hawed in expressing their opinions, coyly hiding behind the “wala akong masabi” standard cop-out. In future, judges should judge – isn’t that what they’re supposed to be there for?