ARTS+ENTERTAINMENT
The Voice
of Queens
By KATRINA MEDOFF
KATRINA@BOROMAG.COM
@KATRINAMEDOFF
@KATYA_M22
Local fans of NBC’s reality singing
competition “The Voice” tuned
in this season to cheer on Astoria
resident Katrina Rose as she
performed in the blind audition,
battle rounds and knockout
rounds of the television show.
Coach Miley Cyrus chose Rose for her team
during Rose’s blind audition, in which she sang
“Kozmic Blues” by Janis Joplin. The four celebrity
coaches — Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Hudson,
Adam Levine and Blake Shelton — face away
from contestants as they sing during the blind
audition so that their decisions are purely
based on contestants’ voices. If they’re interested
in choosing a contestant for their team, they
push a red button to turn their chair around.
But not seeing the coaches’ faces didn’t
make the experience any less nerve-wracking,
said Rose, a kickboxing instructor and musical
theater performer who played Tracy Turnblad
in the national tour of "Hairspray" and acted as
a standby for the same role on Broadway.
“Even though you’re just seeing the backs
of their chairs when you first step out there,
you’re like, ‘I know who’s in those chairs,’” she
said. “And it goes by in such a flash. I feel like I
kind of blacked out for a minute.”
Since the red button sound effects are
added in after the fact, Rose didn’t notice right
away that Cyrus had pushed her button to turn
around.
“I didn’t realize Miley Cyrus had turned around
for me until I turned to walk another direction on
the stage and all of a sudden I saw the light out
of the corner of my eye was like, ‘Oh my God. Oh
my God — I’m on the show,” Rose said.
It was especially cool being on Cyrus’ team,
Rose said, because “she’s in a place in her career
and her life where she’s just grown so much and
she was really starting with her own music to
connect back to her roots and strip back down
to a more honest place with her music and you
could totally feel that in her coaching with us.
“On top of that, to be in an all-girls team and
feel the power of that especially in today’s world
where women are having a resurgence of owning
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their own power and making their presence
known and making their voices heard, it really
struck a chord in me and made me feel like I was
exactly where I was supposed to be a right place
at the exact right time.”
Next, Rose went head-to-head with another of
Cyrus’ contestants, Janice Freeman, in the battle
round. All of the coaches sang Rose’s praise after
she and Freeman sang “W.O.M.A.N.” by Stevie
Nicks and Etta James:
Photo courtesy of Hollis Brown
