Upcoming young performer Mikaela was recently declared the winner of the Vodafone Upcoming Artist 2011 competition, while Gianluca placed second and Chris Grech came third.
The competition had been running for a number of weeks and involved various live jamming sessions at Temptasian at The Palace Hotel, Sliema, from which eight finalists were chosen.
Videos of the finalists posted on Vodafone’s Facebook page went viral, giving people the opportunity to ‘like’ the videos and vote by SMS. This played an important part in the final vote, since SMS votes and Facebook ‘Like’ votes each carried 20 per cent of the total vote.
Another 40 per cent of the vote came from the judging panel and the remainder from artistic director Mro Sigmund Mifsud.
Sporting her trademark flaming red hair, Mikaela is no stranger to accolades; she was, in fact, voted best New Artist at the 2010 Malta Music Awards and has been attracting the attention of Maltese music fans with her particular brand of pop rock.
The young singer said she is looking forward to an exciting musical future ahead, adding that she wanted to give “a wild outburst of thanks to all those who not only popped by at the jamming sessions, voted for me and liked my video but also who supported me through this competition”.
Mikaela’s performances during the competition also featured musicians Jimmy Bartolo, Banjo Cachia and younger sister Yorika Attard, all of whom she thanked “for rocking the stage with me”.
The aim of the Vodafone Jamming Sessions is to provide emerging singers and musicians with the opportunity to perform live before an audience and compete for the title. The competition was open to pop and rock performers aged over 16.
All the finalists said the experience was a learning curve due to the fact that they had to organise the accompanying musicians themselves while deciding which songs to perform both for the jamming sessions and the final night.
Some also said the experience gave a good boost to their self-confidence.
All finalists got together on the final night to perform a closing song.