After a rather disrupted passage through the competition, a 14-year-old singer was named the 2020 ’Young Singer of Mann’ on Sunday afternoon.

Evie Skillicorn was voted top out of a field of 18 talented young singers, aged between eight and 15 years of age last weekend after an afternoon of competition, held at the Erin Arts Centre.

Former Guild-winner Evie, from Onchan, impressed the judges with her renditions of three songs, ’June’, by Roger Quilter, ’Popular’, written by Stephen Schwartz and taken form the musical ’Wicked’ and the classic ’Somewhere Over The Rainbow’.

Anya Jagus, 15, from Douglas was judged to come in second place, singing the Irish traditional song, ’The Road to Chaddy’, ’Practically Perfect’, by George Stiles and Britten’s ’The Corpus Christi Carol’ .

A further award for the most highly promising singer went to 12-year-old Joshua Mooney, from Onchan, who also impressed the judges with a version of ’Somewhere over the Rainbow’.

The judging panel of Emma Callin, Gwyn Jones, Wendy McDowell, Fenella Bazin and organiser Dr John Bethell felt that Evie was a worthy winner and more than deserved her name to be added to the list of previous winners, although the decision to choose a winner from the finalists was tough.

’As you can imagine, it is very difficult to choose a winner from such a talented field,’ said John.

’There really wasn’t much between the top two singers, but at the end of the deliberations the jury were unanimous on choosing Evie. She had a very good voice and also was a very good performer.

’It was also clear from the reactions of the audience that they all thought Evie was the worthy winner too.

’But, in all honesty, the entire field of 18 finalists were all so good, they each deserved to be called a Young Singer of Mann.’

Evie was presented with the winning trophy and top prize of £150 by Emma Callin, also the head of the Arts with the Isle of Man Government.

Evie, Anya and Joshua will appear at a special concert at the Erin Arts Centre during nexy year’s Young Musicianof Mann.

by Mike Wade

Twitter:@iomnewspapers