Protégé (GMA 7) Face-Off Winners

The battle for the big break begins

Last Sunday, followers of Protégé - the newest reality TV talent search of GMA Network (GMA7) - watched the first face-off of the proteges coming from the cities of Cabanatuan, Ilo-Ilo, and Cebu.The judges, composed of Bert de Leon (TV director), Homer Flores (musician/composer), and Joey de Leon (comedian/TV host), picked the following face-off winners:

1. Kenneth Monico (Cabanatuan), JayR's Protégé
2. Nomer Limatag, Jr. (Cebu), Rachel Ann Go's Protégé
3. Lirah Bermudez, (Ilo-Ilo), Janno Gibb's Protégé

These three winners battled with their fellow Protégé in their respective regions. Previously, during the regional Protégé auditions, the regional judges picked the top 3 singing contenders. The top three then were groomed and trained by their respective mentors in preparation for the regional face-off. From the top 3, one emerges as a face-off winner, who will then make the national top 10 proteges.

How they scored, in my opinion

The judges scores are not disclosed. For that reason, I will make my own scores based on Vocal Quality (VQ), Vocal Performance on that day (VP), and Star Potential as a singer (SP). My scores range from 1 to 5, where 5 is the perfect score.

Kenneth Monico of Cabanatuan, so far, has the biggest potential to make it in the show business. His mentor is JayR, a R&B artist.

• VQ = 4.5 
• VP = 4.0 (because of his jitters)
• SP = 4.0 

Nomer Limatag, Jr. of Cebu, has effortlessly powerful and raw vocals. Being a young boy, he is a charmer. Despite his being Cebuano, his English accent was good that it sounded like engineered with his song choice.

• VQ = 4.5
• VP = 4.75
• SP = 4.5 (he can wow the audience while he is young)

Lirah Bermudez of Ilo-Ilo has good potentials as well. She can grow up getting better and better in singing if she would ambition it. Her vocal performance though that night was not too well.

• VQ = 4.0 
• VP = 3.5 (playing the guitar while singing became a disadvantage)
• SP = 4.0 in the future, currently 3.0 because she's not too young to be a child wonder but too young to be a young idol)

If there was a wild card

If two of the top 3 for each region were eliminated, it doesn't mean that he or she or they are better than the other top 1 regional winners. The bottom 20 should battle for another face-off to pick the top 3 and assign another mentor. From the top 3, one winner should emerge to make it in the top 11. But this is just a wish.

Among the six who didn't make it, Rhey Otic of Cebu has the best potentials. He has good vocal range (VQ = 4.75) and almost perfect vocal performance (VP = 4.9). His star potential is not that high though. I can see, however, that he can be successful in lounges and comedy bars like Zirkoh or Klauns of Allan K.

Those who didn't make it

These are the other Protégé hopefuls who didn't make it.

The Cercado Sisters (Cabanatuan). The performance of this all-girl quartet was very good indeed; well rehearsed. The group's potential break though is low, perhaps, due to unintuitive packaging. If they had the fierceness of the Blasians, they probably make it.

The Blasians (Cebu) had good packaging. They could really make it. In fact, Joey de Leon commented that the first time he saw this all-girl Black-Asian trio, he thought they were it. Unfortunately, the performance of the Blasians was disappointing. They did not blend well and they were singing out of tune. They knew it was bad. Their eyes were rolling during the performance trying to figure out who was singing out of tune. At least, they had the keen ear to a right note.

Ricky Deloviar (Ilo-Ilo) is like a vocal copy of Jovit, the first winner of Pinoy Got Talent. That was a disadvantage. He should have carried somewhat an original packaging and performance. Well, at least, his English diction was a lot better than Jovit's.

Alejandro (Ilo-Ilo), a male-duo that mentor Janno formed during the Protégé audition in Ilo-Ilo could have made it if they exhibited more confidence and performed a non-Josh Groban song. Allen Sta. Maria, a young lass from Cabanatuan, has good vocals but her performance wasn't that good if compared to Lirah's, a young lass from Ilo-Ilo.

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