Olivia Gaspard, a sixth grader at Bear Path Elementary School. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Olivia Gaspard let the lyrics to Miley Cyrus’ “The Climb” envelop her, lifting one arm into the air as if she could touch the words. A backing track surged forward, and she turned toward the audience, bending at the waist. As she sang, she could feel the words humming beneath the skin, as if someone was holding up a mirror in the microphone. When she looked back, she was exactly who and where she was supposed to be.
Wednesday night, Gaspard was one of 14 contestants in the fourth annual “Voice of Hamden,” a biannual singing competition and fundraiser from the Hamden Education Foundation (HEF) and the Hamden Department of Fine & Performing Arts. Held in the auditorium at Hamden Middle School, the competition brought together students from different schools and grade levels, building a cross-town community through music.
It included both a junior category, for students in middle school, and a senior category, for students in high school. By the end of the night, crowd and judge favorites had been named in each.
“It’s a great event for the kids,” said organizer Linda Bonadies, herself a singer/songwriter and HEF board member who launched the competition in 2018 and has brought in celebrity judges like Blessing Offor and Linedy Genao, both Hamden High School alumni.
Judges Kat Bower-Phipps, Gabriella Russo, Linden Genao, and Linda Bonadies.
“Having them have the opportunity to engage with these Hamden High students who have made it … sometimes these dreams feel so far away, and so when you are able to engage, it’s incredible for them,” she continued. “They’re learning to have the courage to share their passions, and that’s kind of what life is all about.”
That was clear Wednesday, as young singers fell into quiet, sometimes mellifluous conversation. Tucked into a music classroom, snippets of songs floated from the doorway, pop superstars like Bruno Mars and Miley Cyrus mingling with Paul Alba’s old-school charm. At one point, it seemed that Elphaba had cast a fleeting spell, and bits of “Popular” and “Defying Gravity” suddenly filled the room. A half-finished pizza and grease-spotted box sat like a prop at the center of the room.
It was only when Marcella Sorensen, a seventh grader at Hamden Middle School, noticed that there were 22 minutes until the competition that students seemed to snap back to the present. A small circle formed around her, peers lobbing lyrics at one another in a kind of unexpected, musical round robin. When it was his turn to sing, Helen Street School sixth grader Justin King took it back to 1963, when a velvet-voiced Anka released “Put Your Head On My Shoulder.”
Justin King, a sixth grader at Helen Street School, with co-emcee Peter Bonadies.
Put your head on my shoulder/Hold me in your arms, ba-by, he sang with a surprising depth suddenly in his voice. Around him, a circle of junior contestants listened intently, then burst into murmurs or approval. Someone gave a low, satisfied mmmm from their throat, and it sounded almost like purring. It was the first time he was competing, and he was ready.
“Singing has helped me feel more at ease during stressful situations,” he said, listing off role models that included Frank Sinatra, Bruno Mars and Elton John. As a young kid, he caught the music bug from his mom, and hasn’t stopped singing since. He credited music teacher Elizabeth Caldwell, the night’s co-emcee, with nurturing his interest. “I think it really helps me express myself.”
That was true for Bear Path Elementary School sixth grader Olivia Gaspard, who later won crowd favorite in the junior category. When she was thinking about a song selection, she said, she settled on Miley Cyrus’ “The Climb” because she could see and hear her own journey with self-confidence in the lyrics. The song feels personal: she knows what it’s like to feel like she’s not enough, or bear the brunt of classmates’ opinions and judgement. The song is about her journey to self-love and acceptance.
With the help of her mom, she’s learned to “stop caring about other people’s opinions,” she said. “The only opinion that matters is mine.”
Top: Peter Bonadies with contestant Olivia Clarke. Bottom: Olivia Gaspard with co-emcee Elizabeth Caldwell, a music educator in the Hamden Public Schools.
As she rehearsed Cyrus’ power ballad before Wednesday, she made it entirely her own, adding a weight and timbre to the piece that the original singer never managed. Wednesday, she sang right from her diaphragm, with an emotional heft that seemed as though it might burst into a long-awaited roar under just the right conditions.
When she sings, “I feel like all opinions, all bad things—it all goes away,” she said before taking the stage. “I gather myself, I find out who I really am.”
Nearby, fellow Bear Path sixth grader Olivia Clarke added that The Voice had helped her create a new and unexpected musical community. When she entered with Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten,” she hadn’t expected to come out of auditions and rehearsals with a handful of new friends, all as dedicated to their craft as she was.
“I’ve made a bunch of friendships with people I never would have met otherwise,” she said. Onstage half an hour later, she took up the whole space with her presence, stepping in and out of a spotlight as she strummed an acoustic guitar and doubled down on the hook.
Spring Glen Elementary School sixth grader Annie Yaneiro warms up.
In the auditorium, the room had begun to fill with excited siblings and families and grandparents, many toting bouquets of flowers alongside thick winter layers and phones primed for the video settling, ready to record bits of the evening. In a hallway outside the choir classroom, contestants steadied their nerves, gathering backstage as emcees Campbell and Peter Bonadies introduced the event.
The evening’s surprises seemed to multiply from there, celebrating the music that sits at the core of the event. Gabriella Riccio, a nurse who won The Voice twice before graduating, opened with a soulful cover of Joy Woods and Ingrid Michaelson’s “My Days,” setting the tone for the night. Genao, a Hamden High School alum who originated the role of Cinderella in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bad Cinderella in 2022, entered to celebratory cheers and applause.
In the hour before the competition began, she had acknowledged the importance of music education in the Hamden public schools, which set her on a path towards Broadway. Since learning what a “triple threat” was in high school, her life has revolved around musical theater, including roles in On Your Feet! and Dear Evan Hansen. She credited Eric Nyquist, who served as the director of fine and performing arts for the Hamden Public Schools until June 2021, with inspiring her to dream big.
Top: Genao. Bottom: Sorensen.
“Theater teaches you how to put your best self forward, how to deal with rejection, how to step into your power, how to be prepared,” crediting musicals like In The Heights (“I pray to play Nina one day!”) and Wicked as helping her fall in love with the stage. “I feel like it just teaches you overall how to just, I think, be a better human, because you have to learn to listen, and be empathetic, and better understand.”
The contestants, some as young as 10 or 11 years old, took her lead, each gliding onto the stage with a presence and panache well beyond their years. Kicking it off, Olivia Clarke brightened the evening with a version of “Unwritten” that sparkled, ebullient as she picked up the pace. Slipping into Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile,” Aiofe Murtaugh kept the mood high, putting her own spin on the bop.
Performing on her home turf, Marcella Sorensen delighted the audience with a performance of “Hopelessly Devoted” from Randal Kleiser’s 1978 movie Grease. When she began with an exasperated sigh and coordinated eye-and-shoulder roll, it got a collective laugh that later won her the judges’ choice award.
Others veered toward the spiritual and the serious. When she introduced “A Million Dreams,” Julia Doan put her heart into the song, and let herself feel the lyrics. As she took the stage with Hillsong United’s “Oceans,” Spring Glen Elementary School sixth grader Annie Yaneiro channeled her own faith, hoping that the song would speak to people in the audience.
Even before she launched into the song, she won the audience over with her life goals “to make it through life and do something spectacular.” On her feet, a pair of sparkling laces peeked out from her black boots, as if they were magic slippers in disguise.
“My faith is really important to me,” she said. “I like to spread it—some people need Him.”
Scarlett Wyrtzen, who won judge’s choice in the senior category. “It’s an instrument that comes from within you,” she said in a phone call after the competition. “It’s so special.”
That momentum carried into the senior category, with selections that ranged from Taylor Swift (a nod to sisters Adriana and Nora McDonough, a fifth and eleventh grader who slowed it down with “All Too Well”) to The Little Mermaid to Thelonius Monk. When Hamden High School senior Hannah Sagnella took the stage, she wowed with an original song titled “Airplanes” that later was crowned the crowd favorite.
In a phone call after the event, she explained that it was inspired by a trip to Boston with her boyfriend, during which she felt a moment of serenity while watching planes take off from the airport.
“If there’s an opportunity, don’t be afraid to go for it and put yourself out there,” she said of her mindset for the evening. “It’s about the aspect of sharing who you are with people and the experience is really great. Don’t be afraid to be who you are.”
Before an ensemble performance from On Your Feet!, Hamden High School and Educational Center for the Arts (ECA) junior Scarlett Wyrtzen closed it out with a silky-smooth, sultry rendition of Monk’s “Round Midnight” that floated out over the audience, wrapping listeners in a timeless kind of longing (“I just thought it was the most beautiful song,” she recalled of choosing it—listen to her performance here). After going on to win the judge’s choice in the senior category, she said she was filled with gratitude for the chance to participate.
“Oh my goodness!” she said in a phone call after the competition. “I feel so at peace [when I sing]. My favorite thing about singing is engaging with the audience. I could sound awful, but if the audience is still engaged in my body language, my stage presence, I’ve succeeded. I wasn’t singing to win. I just wanted to sing.”
“I love listening to people sing,” she added. “It’s an instrument that comes from within you. It’s so special.”