Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Eighteen gals received golden tickets during the Boston auditions.

And while we’ve heard from some impressive singers from that episode of American Idol, contestants like Ashley Rodriguez and Katie Stevens, I’m stunned we haven’t seen more of others this season.

Even though some have now been eliminated, their music is worth checking out. Especially that of Jaclyn North, Katelyn Clampett and Jess Wolfe.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen for yourself. I’ve provided plenty of links below.

Amanda Shechtman

She’s the 19-year-old theater student from Roslyn, N.Y., we first met singing Britney Spears’ “Oophs! I Did It Again” to get Ryan’s attention on the “Road to Hollywood” episode. And she came across as a drama queen I figured American Idol would showcase in Hollywood. They didn’t, and Amanda has been eliminated. She had aspirations of following in Adam Lambert’s footsteps, telling Idol, “I want to be the first musical theater type person who can sing in other genres and do other types of music.” Link: Go here to watch her audition again. Go here to hear her sing with the Roslyn Chamber singers.

Ashley (Makailah) Rodriguez

This 22-year-old from Boston was introduced to us as Ashley Rodriguez but has performed as Ashley Makailah. After she sang “If I Ain’t Got You” for her audition song, Kara told her she has “the kind of look and voice that could be very commercial.” Translation, she’s a looker with a gorgeous smile. In her Idol video, Ashley says she has wanted to try out for Idol for a while, but made a pact with her mom that she wouldn’t unitl she was almost finished college. She graduated from the Berklee School of Music in December. Link: Go here to watch her audition again. Go here to hear two of her songs on MySpace.

Claire Fuller

We only saw a few seconds of this 24-year-old from Philly singing “To Be With You” during the Boston audition episode, but she certainly entered the competition with an interesting background. A student at Temple University, she has performed at the Vatican in Rome for two years. In fact, she sang during at the pope’s benediction while studying abroad on a day that also happened to mark her parents’ 25th wedding anniversary. She’s a senior at Temple and her actual hometown is Elkins Park, Pa. Link: Go here to watch Claires’ Idol video interview.

Ellery Bonham

I doubt there was a younger contestant in Hollywood this year. Ellery, 16, of East Greenwich, R.I., said she just made the age cutoff for the Idol audition by two weeks. A junior at East Greenwich High School, she said she’d been wanting to audition ever since watching Kelly Clarkson win idol in season one. Her most memorable performance: Singing at a memorial service for a good friend who passed away. “It was really good just to be there and to be there in memory of her,” Ellery says. Link: Go here to watch Ellery in a very impressive rendition of “Dock of the Bay” in a high school talent show.

Jaclyn North

Have we even seen her on Idol this year? I don’t think so, which is really Idol’s loss. Below, I’ll provide a link to her MySpace page. Be sure to listen to “Joshua” and “He’s All Yours.” Just superb. Anyway, Jaclyn is an 18-year-old from Dallas, Texas. She moved to Nashville at age 16 to pursue a career in the music business. On MySpace, her music is described as “a smooth blend of traditional country and southern rock, with a sultry kiss of blues.” Which I thought sounded pretty boastful, until I listened to her music. Link: Go here for Jaclyn’s MySpace music.

Jennifer Hirsh

You might remember Jennifer simply because of her audition song — “Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead.” Idol’s blue bar identified the 23-year-old from New York as a receptionist, but she’s also done more than a little music. In fact, she released a five-song EP in November 2008. It’s available on iTunes. Her MySpace classifies her music as jazz, soul, folk and says she “channels Ella Fitzgerald and Norah Jones to create her own unique voice: a raw, soothing, soulful breath of fresh air to the New York City music scene.” Link: Go here to hear three of the songs of that 2008 EP.

Jessica Cunningham

If determination counts for anything, this 23-year-old from Portland, Maine, might have a leg up on her Idol competition. This year marked her sixth time trying out for the show. And, you know what? She’s still around. She was part of Team Neopolitan on group night — the group that also included Thaddeus Johnson and Paige Miles and sang Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” while feuding with “Team Destiny’s Wild.” Idol’s blue bar identifies her as a makeup artist / hair stylist. Link: Go here to watch Jessica perform with Team Neopolitan.

Jess Wolfe

This 24-year-old was featured in the same Idol audition montage as Claire Fuller and Jennifer Hirsh, and she’s another contestant we should be seeing lots more of. In November, she and songwriting partner Holly Laessig released “Songs from the Bromley House,” a 10-track CD available on iTunes. The title comes from the former music school where the women lived while attending the Berklee College of Music. Jess graduated in 2007 with a dual degree in vocal performance and music business/management, so you won’t be surprised to find out she’s a booking agent by day, a performer by night. Link: Go here for Jess’ MySpace music, here for the Lucius MySpace page. And make sure to listen to “Shenandoah.”

Katelyn Clampett

I think we saw Katelyn once on Idol, when she struck a sour note on the keyboards on the first day of Hollywood, prompting Simon to proclaim, “I hated everything about that performance.” Go to Katelyn’s MySpace, and I think you’ll find something you like. The 22-year-old North Carolina native who goes by the nickname “Sweet Pea” has a very good song called “Sweet Tea” there. She’s also released a single you can download from iTunes called “Water Them Down,” which she wrote. In fact she won the “Performer/Songwriter Showcase” and the “Songwriting Competition” at Berklee College of Music in 2008, according to her MySpace. Link: Go here to see the video for “Water Them Down” and here to hear “Sweet Tea” and a couple other Katelyn tunes.

Katie Stevens

This 17-year-old from Middlebury, Conn., was told she “could win it all” by Kara during the group performance episode from Hollywood Week. She was featured during the Boston auditions, the young girl with the grandmother recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She’s a high school senior who won the Miss Westbury’s Outstanding Teen pageant last January and went on to finish as first runner-up in the Miss Connecticut Outstanding Teen competition, where she sang a Whitney Houston song. Oh, and she can speak Portuguese, thanks to her grandmom. Link: Go here to hear Katie sing two covers in YouTube videos I’ve embedded in a blog.

Keanna O’Quinn

At age 27, this gal from Harlem, N.Y., says she tried out for Idol this year because she felt like she’d waited long enough to pursue her passion. In her Idol video, she recalls singing at the Apollo Theater while in high school and at a church where Martin Luther King Jr. once spoke in front of an audience from all over the world. If you read my blog about contestants with unusual talents, this is the young lady who used to be able to breathe out of her eyeball. “But I stopped practicing,” she said, “so it doesn’t work anymore.” Link: Go here to watch Keanna’s Idol video interview. Sorry, I couldn’t find any performance on the Web. Anyone know of any?

Kelly Caruso

This 23-year-old from Pittstown, N.J., also made it to Hollywood on Idol back in season six. Since then, she’s been singing lead vocals for a cover band called Garden State Radio, which specializes in “playing pop-rock hits from the 80’s, 90’s and today,” according to the group’s MySpace page. Among Kelly’s other talents? Well, she told Idol she can sing opera and demonstrated an imitation of Kermit the frog in her Idol video interview. Link: Go here to hear Garden State Radio cover a number of songs, inlcuding “Love is a Battlefield.”

Leah Laurenti

She’s the contestant who closed out the Boston audition episode, the one from the strict family who said she wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music while growing up. Then she blew the judges away with a pretty amazing version of “Blue Skies.” Leah figures she might have picked up the singing bug way back in third grade, when a substitute teacher in her music class had her go to the front of the room and sing “Silver Bells” She recalls singing the song in a “funny, silly way.” Next thing she knew, her music teacher had her repeat the performance for the whole cafeteria at school, and her fellow students loved it. Link: Go here to watch Leah sing “Blue Skies” again.

Lucy Yeghiazaryan

One of the more interesting contestants in Hollywood, Lucy (or Lusi) was born in Armenia and moved to the U.S. with her family at age 11. She’s 18 now, a resident of New Jersey and, by all accounts, a veteran performer. At one point, she performed as part of the YY Sisters with her two older sisters. According to a story on nj.com, she entered her first major competition at age 5. According to another story in northjersey.com, she won a $3,000 scholarship from a jazz group to further her musical education when she was still a sophomore in high school. Link: Go here for a YouTube video of Lucy performing “I Should Care.” Other videos are there as well.

Maddy Curtis

This is the young girl who looked like an early favorite when she wowed the judges with her rendition of “Hallelujah” in Idol’s season nine premiere. She’s the ninth of 12 children and has four brothers with Down syndrome. Maddy was eliminated in Hollywood, but my guess is this 16-year-old from Bluemont, Va., will be back auditioning for a future season of Idol. She says her most memorable performance came at age 5 when she played Gretel in “The Sound of Music.” “I did a little solo,” she says in her Idol video interview. “And I was hooked.” By the way, she says Jason Castro’s performance of “Hallelujah” was her favorite Idol moment. Link: In late January, Maddy apparently did two performances at the Franklin Performing Arts Center in Virginia for earthquake victims in Haiti. Here’s a YouTube video of a portion of her performance.

Shannon Turner

I’m pretty sure we didn’t see this 24-year-old from Queens, N.Y., on the Idol audition shows. She has a theatrical background and says she tried out for Idol at the urging of her vocal coach. As for her most memorable experience, that came while busking. People liked her performance, which she says meant more to her than most of her stage performances. Considering her background, it’s not surprising that she proclaims herself a big fan of Adam Lambert in her Idol video interview. Link: Here’s a YouTube video of Shannon performing.

Siobhan Magnus

This 19-year-old from Cape Cod, Mass., was part of Destiny’s Wild on group night on Idol. That was the quartet that would have been better served by doing much less whining and letting their performance of “Bad Romance” speak for itself. Because it was quite good. Siobhan was involved in her high school’s drama club, and you can find YouTube videos of several of her performances. She was also former lead singer for a progressive / alternative / happy hardcore group called Lunar Valve. On her MySpace, she proclaims that she wants “to be a social reformer and an advocate for media literacy for young girls so I can teach them to not let magazines, television, etc., make them feel bad about themselves because media images are filthy and unrealistic.” Link: Go here to hear Siobhan singing with Lunar Valve.

Zoya Shpigelman

This 20-year-old from Staten Island, N.Y., was born in Ukraine. She says she had wanted to try out for Idol for years. This year, “I just got the courage to do it.” She told Idol she thinks her sincerity might set her apart from the other contestants and that her most memorable performance came when she was 17 or 18 and performed “I Have Nothing” at the Millennium Theater in Brooklyn, which is described as an oasis for Russian culture in New York. Link: Go here to watch Zoya’s Idol video interview. Again, I can’t find any of her music on the Web, but feel free to add a link below if you know of any.