中国好声音欧洲站伦敦决赛 The Voice of China Europe Auditions Final

Sunday marked the grand finale of China's The Voice Europe tour 中国好声音欧洲版.Thousands of eager Chinese born and/or living abroad plus the odd white 'Laowai' competed for a ticket to China to compete in what is probably the biggest singing competition on earth.

The excited finalists from London and Manchester, Paris and Amsterdam had three things in common: Their love for music, the Chinese language and the dream to become Chinas next voice.

All contestants are definitely tremendous talents when it comes to singing.  As far as performance is concerned it became clear that many of them still have a thing or two to learn. While almost pitch - perfect, often the performances were a bit stiff and did not manage to convey the emotions of the song.

What became very clear to me as I was watching all these lovely, hopeful talents was that either I am getting old or today's music is just not as catchy as it used to be. My favourites were a Mandarin aria delivered by 武赫 in a splendid robe. She was elegance incarnate and imho the strongest voice in the entire competition. Her performance was one of the two that gave me goosebumps.

Wu He, sheer elegance and splendid voice

Goosebumps number two was  suprise star 16-year old 陈伟康s rendition of good old classic "Beyond the Sea" in Mandarin. I never imagined such a young dangly teddy bear could be the Asian Sinatra.

Tall boy center: 16 year old wonder boy Chen Weikang

I was very pleased with the judges choice for the 5 finalists as they were definitely the strongest contestats vocally and on a performance level.

Overall, the Voice Europe finale in the Shaw Theatre was a highly entertaining show with hit music spanning an extraordinarily wide net of time and genres. I wish the European finalists all the best for their trip to the big battle in China!