By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE — The 10th anniversary season of Northern Star, a regional singing competition that serves as a fundraiser for the United Way of Aroostook, kicks off Friday night in the St. John Valley. Productions in Presque Isle and Houlton will follow Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
According to Claudia Stevens, executive director of the United Way of Aroostook, applications have been steadily coming in.
“Applications are coming in quite well,” she said, “maybe even a little better than they were last year. Very often people do wait until that very last minute to make the decision to give themselves the final push and say, ‘OK, I’m going to do this!’
“Currently we have about 16 people signed up for the Presque Isle show, 10 signed up for Fort Kent, and a lesser amount signed up for Houlton,” said Stevens. “If anybody’s on the fence, we would really encourage them to sign up. If we have to hold tryouts we will; we’ve done that in the past. We’re in a very common place that we’re usually in at this point in time. I’ve seen in Houlton, for example, the Wednesday before the show and I only had three or four contestants, but by Friday it was full. We want people to have the opportunity to showcase their talents. If people really want to do this, we want to help them to be able to do it.”
The first competition is set for Friday, Feb. 7 at 7 p.m. in the Fox Auditorium at the University of Maine at Fort Kent. The second regional show will be held Saturday, Feb. 8 at 7 p.m. at the Presque Isle Middle School Auditorium, while the southern Aroostook production will be held Sunday, Feb. 9 at 2 p.m. at the Houlton High School Auditorium.
Tentatively performing at the Presque Isle regional show are Jay Nelson, Malari Page, Justin Quinones, Keith Ouellette and Jamilynn Deschesne, all of Caribou; Robert Helstrom and Allyson Plummer, both of Washburn; Presque Isle’s Raeann Michaud, Todd Corey and John Buckley; Denise Michaud and Megan Ouellette, both of Van Buren; Robin McLellan and Kent McLellan, both of Mapleton; Nicole Adams of Fort Fairfield, Michael Ouellette of Westfield, and Christian Sirois, of Drummond, N.B.
Planning to perform at Houlton’s regional show are Chuck Grim, Amira Abouleish, Nick Lunn and the Rev. Marc Fuller, all of Houlton; Kristen Mazur of Linneus, and Dan Rooney of Presque Isle. Stevens said should no additional participants sign up for the Houlton show, she would encourage some of the central Aroostook participants to compete in the Shiretown.
Organizers of the upcoming 10th anniversary season of Northern Star — which first began as Aroostook Idol before growing to include competitors from neighboring parts of New Brunswick — are planning a new twist to this year’s contest as they mark the milestone. The local stage show, originally modeled after the popular FOX television show “American Idol,” is adopting a concept introduced on the more recent singing competition show, NBC’s “The Voice.”
“Essentially, our audience will pick their top two contestants from each of our regional shows in Fort Kent, Presque Isle and Houlton, as they have for several years. The new twist is that instead of the judges picking the third finalist to head to our finale production, they will actually pair each of the audience selections with a pick of their own. Each of the contestant pairs will work with a regional judge to prepare and sing one song together at the finale,” said Stevens. “At the finale, the audience will vote for the contestant in each pair they felt was the strongest. The audience picks will then compete solo in the final round for the 2014 Northern Star title.”
Audience members can plan on hearing some great local talent at the upcoming shows.
“People can expect to see and hear the high quality, high level of entertainment and talent that we’ve displayed in years past,” Stevens said. “That pool of talent is still there; it’s ongoing. We have new talent moving up — young, old and everything in between — and I think we’ll continue to have some wonderful shows.”
Organizers will continue with changes they made to the judges panel a few years ago when they went away from having the same three judges appear at each regional venue. Instead, three local “celebrity” judges from that specific region will sit on each panel. The local judges will help “coach” the regional contestant pairs for the finale, including picking the song they will perform.
In Fort Kent, judges will be Pam Cyr, who won the singing competition in 2009; Samantha Boutot, who won in 2006; and Charlie Ouellette. Presque Isle judges will be Annie Charles, who won in 2007; Dan Ladner and Melbourne Smith, while critiquing the Houlton singers will be Tammy Goetsch, Tim McAfee and Julie DeMaere.
While the Northern Star competition is now a decade old, Stevens said it “seems like just yesterday” that the fundraiser began.
“When I look back, it seems like we just started doing this. However, when you look at the number of people who have competed over the years, as well as the number of volunteers and the time that goes into putting this on, it’s phenomenal,” she said. “Right after we did our first show we said, ‘OK, this went really well. We can probably get another year — maybe two — out of this and then it’s probably going to fade away like a lot of things do,’ but we haven’t seen that happen yet.
“Every year we think, ‘This is probably going to be the year where it fades away,’ but it just hasn’t happened,” said Stevens. “I think it’s continued year after year because we have truly pulled out some amazing talent from The County that no one knew existed. There were some real surprises that have stepped out on stage every year. There’s always somebody that just blows you away and you think, ‘They should be trying out for ‘American Idol,’ as opposed to being just here on the local level.’ I think that’s what keeps people — both the singers and the audience — coming back.”
Stevens, who will co-host all the shows with Jason Parent, said close to $300,000 has been raised in the 10 years of the competition.
“That doesn’t even include the in-kind contributions that we’ve received from all of our advertisers,” she said. “If you were to include that, we’d be well over $300,000.”
Admission to each regional show and the finale production is $10. Tickets are available at all KeyBank branches, and any remaining tickets will be sold at the door. The Northern Star Finale will be held Sunday, Feb. 23 at 2 p.m. at the Caribou Performing Arts Center. All proceeds from funds raised at the door will go directly to the United Way of Aroostook’s annual campaign.
For more information, contact the United Way of Aroostook at 764-5197.圸
