Singers, poets and guitarists added a layer of creativity to this year’s Los Angeles Fleet Week — as well as come competition.
They weren’t your everyday performers, but the everyday heroes the military expo in San Pedro celebrates annually. They also happen to have special, non-military talents. Which is why for the first time, Fleet Week featured “Military Has Talent,” a competition that culminated on Memorial Day with seven finalists taking to the state outside the USS Iowa.
Sgt. Jesse Quintana, an Air Force medic, won the talent show on Monday, May 29, by performing Adele’s “Easy on me,” hitting every soprano note that the original artist would herself.
It’s “exhilarating, definitely a rush,” Quintana said of his victory. “There was good competition out there; it was nerve wracking, (so) I tried to tell myself it was another casual karaoke night.”
Quintana used to sing in a church choir, and then continued doing so as as a hobby, training his own voice. But he never pushed himself to perform in this capacity, Quintana said — until now.
He said he may try to take his talent to the next level, Quinta said, perhaps auditioning for a television show such as “The Voice.” But he also wants to be back in San Pedro next year.
“I hope to come back and defend my title next year,” Quintana said.
One of the other seven finalists recited an original poem, and the rest sang songs, including Erykah Badu’s “Tyrone,” Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” and Alicia Keys’s “If I ain’t got you.”
Crowd-cheer voting whittled contestants down to four; those folks performed one last time before judges Morgan Myles and Brayden Lape, both former contestants on “The Voice,” picked Quintana as the winner.
Myles and Lape also performed later in the day.
The competition started at the top of the weekend with about a dozen participants, talent show organizer Laurie Baker said. Next year, she added, they may open the show up to…
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