Photos by Ralph Freso / Slideshow
The sisters both got ovations.
Pianist Sydney Miller performed a fun and elegant, playful and emotive medley to close out GCU’s Got Talent Wednesday night in Global Credit Union Arena. While the crowd's votes were counted in the annual student talent competition, her sister Claire Miller, last year’s winner, took the stage for her own medley on the violin, leading to another ovation.
Sydney won the competition over seven other acts.
“I’m really happy for her,” said Claire, who served as a ceremonial judge, though the audience picks the winner.
Sydney said she took her inspiration to enter the contest from Claire, watching her at GCU's Got Talent on the livestream while she was in high school last year. But as the day drew near, the freshman didn’t know if she could pull it off.
“Yesterday I was so upset. I was thinking, ‘I’m not doing this.’”
But then her fingers hit the piano keys, the stage nerves faded and the students were enthralled as sweeping classics wove into little playful tidbits of Disney’s “When You Wish Upon a Star,” before pounding chords struck a chord with “Golden Hour,” JVKE’s sensation that had the crowd singing in full throat “it’s … your … gooolden… hour!”
She had them hooked. She lifted her chin and smiled.
“That made me so happy,” Sydney said afterward.
She comes from a musical family. Her parents, Christopher and Tracy, both sing and play the piano. Her high school brother plays the drums. Sister Bryn, a senior at GCU, plays the flute and piano and sings, while Claire plays the violin.
“We wanted music to be part of their life,” said Christopher Miller, his family traveling from their home near Pittsburgh for the show. “She really is an unbelievable musician; she plays everything by ear.”
After a bit of Adele’s moody “Someone Like You" and a little sample of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” she hushed the crowd with her skillful take on Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi’s “Experience.”
The family wasn’t done. Claire took the stage for a special performance by last year's winner and ripped through another pop medley while finishing with the intense and fast-paced “Cornfield Chase” from the movie “Interstellar.”
There was plenty of competition, as the four-man band of Canyon Avenue (Mason Lindsey, Jackson Cox, Ben Holcombe and Thomas McQueen) played a pro-worthy, two-song set of their originals, and Emma Cowden wowed the crowd with her catchy, jazzy original song “Sun Puddle.” Both those acts were finalists.
The Canyon Activities Board’s big spring semester event is a sharp contrast with fall’s Lip Sync, where big teams of dancers blast the arena with energy.
“Everybody would be going crazy jumping up and down right now,” said Austin Powell, CAB event coordinator, looking out to the crowd patiently waiting for the first act. “This feels more like you are going to a concert.
“For this event we want to feature people who might not be well known around campus but are insanely talented students who want to share it with people.”
To wit, one of the judges is a commuter student – Walter Wright – and senior Parker Dennis was doing his first gig as host.
Then the crowd was treated to the tender performance of Mallary Bauman, whose friend wrote a poem about dancing with Jesus. Bauman turned it into a quiet, powerful song. And to Shae Dale, with pink hair and a wonderful stage presence, who crooned her salty Billie Eilish song, “L’Amour De Ma Vie.”
There was a bit of levity among the songmaking. The team of SP31, featuring Reagan James Broome, Cody Allen, Aiden McCall and Cohen Bundrock, channeled the precursor to GCU's Got Talent, which was called Mr. GCU, with a lot of boy band preening, flower-gifting and dancing.
“The others are bands with boys,” joked Broome of the competition beforehand, “we’re a boy band.”
Broome did a solo act last year and has hit it big on social media. He said his team just wanted to do something not as serious and harmonize and dance.
Magician Tim Mullins gave the show variety with his trick – having students pick random numbers to come up with a car’s year, model and color. The crowd was in awe when they found out that the very vehicle, a teal 1963 Volkswagen bus, was parked right outside the arena as a camera followed him outside.
He started magic at 10, got booed off the stage, but learned the trade from a youth pastor.
“I just fell in love with creating moments for people and putting smiles on their faces,” said Mullins, who does gigs in the community on the weekends, including upcoming bachelor and bachelorette parties.
“I got to emphasize I am Magic Tim, not Magic Mike,” he said.
More seriously, he said magic is really about being a good storyteller. “Oftentimes, it’s not the trick itself but how I present the trick,” he said.
The Millers had the magic on this night.
Sydney is only a 17-year-old freshman, so when asked which Miller would go for a three-peat next year, as winners can’t repeat their act, Claire didn’t hesitate.
“She can sing, too,” Claire said.
Of course she can.
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected]
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