The Sea­sons Per­for­mance Hall seeks con­tes­tants for the third annual Yakima’s Got Tal­ent Com­pe­ti­tion. Yakima’s Got Tal­ent accepts con­tes­tants of a vari­ety of ages and fortes, from stand up come­di­ans, to dancers, to bands and clas­si­cally trained musi­cians to broad­way style singers. This yearly event presents a unique opporunity for the tal­ent of the Yakima Val­ley to aston­ish on the main­stage and vie for the Grand Prize of $1,000 in pos­i­tive envi­ron­ment, at a sophis­ti­cated venue. 2^nd place wins $500 and 3^rd place win­ner recieves $250 cash prize.

Pre­lim­i­nary audi­tions with spe­cial guest M.C. Dave Ettl of KIT talk radio and the City Coun­cil will be held on May 22 . From the pre­lim­i­nary audi­tions, twenty con­tes­tants will be selected by judges John Gasperetti, Pat Muir and Linda Doria to move onto the Semi-Finals May 27^th. The Finals, on May 28^th, will show­case Yakima’s Got Tal­ent top ten con­tes­tants, and the win­ner will be selected that evening with our audi­ence act­ing as a fourth judge.

Com­mu­nity mem­bers are encour­aged to pur­chase tick­ets (which vary in price) for the finals and the semi finals and root for their favorite con­tes­tant. These remark­ably enter­tain­ing per­for­mances raise money to sup­port The Seasons.

“The Sea­sons is the only local venue devoted to pre­sent­ing national and inter­na­tion­ally tour­ing musi­cians. Local musi­cians can hear and learn from artists who would’ve been unavail­able to them in Yakima oth­er­wise. Yakima’s Got Tal­ent pro­vides a venue for tal­ented indi­vid­u­als from accross the com­mu­nity to per­form on a stage where they can be heard. For some of our past con­tes­tants, this event was a cat­a­lyst that pro­pelled them into the next phase of their musi­cal jour­ney, ” said Ellie Strosahl, Oper­a­tions Direc­tor at The Sea­sons Per­for­mance Hall and orga­nizer of the event in pre­vi­ous years.

About The Judges:
Local show­man and restau­ran­teur John Gasperetti has been soak­ing up the lime­light for years. He is well known to the Yakima com­mu­nity for his top notch Ital­ian Restau­rant, local phil­an­thropy, Christ­mas Cabarets, Memo­r­ial Folies and numer­ous appear­ances in Ware­house The­atre pro­duc­tions. Between plan­ning lun­cheon menus, cater­ing wed­dings and mas­ter­ing the intri­ca­cies of his newest role at the Ware­house in “Dinner/Music”, Gasperetti always deliv­ers the very best to his patrons. Recently, Gasperetti appeared on the first episode of “Val­ley Fresh Fare”, com­peted in the YWCA fundraiser “So You Think We Can Dance” and will open his house for the 12^th annual Tour of Artists’ Homes.

Pat Muir is the lead writer at On mag­a­zine and a staff writer at the Yakima Herald-Republic. He has cov­ered pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ment but is most well-known locally for his weekly On mag­a­zine col­umn, The Indoors­man. Pat is a grad­u­ate of Michi­gan State University’s jour­nal­ism school and has lived in Wash­ing­ton for 10 years. He has been an avid music fan since child­hood and was known among his fel­low kinder­gart­ners for bring­ing a Fisher Price tape recorder to school so he could dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” These days when he’s not work­ing, he is usu­ally lis­ten­ing to old Tom Waits records.

Linda Doria was raised in the Port­land, Ore­gon area. She earned her bachelor’s degree in music edu­ca­tion and flute per­for­mance from the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon in 1978. She recieved her master’s degree in con­duct­ing at Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton Unitver­sity in 1993. She landed her first job at Kiona Ben­ton School dis­trict in 1978 in Ben­ton City, Wash­ing­ton as a band and choral direc­tor for grades 5 — 12. She worked at the Ki-Be school dis­trict for 15 years. In 1980 she joined the Mid-Columbia Sym­phony and is cur­rently main­tain­ing her posi­tion as prin­ci­pal flutist. Linda has been per­form­ing through­out the Yakima Val­ley and Colum­bia Basin areas for sev­e­real years. She was fea­tured as a guest soloist with the National Flute Con­ven­tion in Dal­las, Texas in 2001 and the Mid-Columbia Sym­phony in 2011. She has been a judge for regional Solo/Ensembles, Wash­ing­ton State Solo/Ensembles, All North­west Honor Bands, and All State Honor Bands. She also was a direc­tor for the Mid-Columbia Youth Sym­phony and been invited to direct band fes­ti­vals. She is cur­rently teach­ing Con­cert Band and Jazz Band at Selah High School, Band and Choir at Oakridge Montes­sori School, and she has a pri­vate flute stu­dio of 24 students.

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