Karaoke World Contest team USA

Congratulations to the winners of the Karoke World Contest and world's best karaoke singers of 2006!

Mike Griffin	Vanessa "vee" Echevarra

Robert Bedrossian of KWCUSA hosted 2006 finals in the Karaoke World Contest
The weekend of July 28th-30th in Miami Florida at the Hard Rock Casino!

Results of the Karaoke World Contest 2006 Finals...
Click on names for more information.

Mens:
1st – Mike Griffin -- USA (Illinois)
2nd – Emilio Martinez -- Cuba
3rd – Corey Keane -- USA (Illinois)
4th – Raymond "RCA" Ancheta -- USA (Hawaii)
5th – Matt Mansfield -- Ireland

Womens:
1st – Vanessa "vee" Echevarra -- Cuba
2nd – Carmen Montgomery -- USA (New York)
3rd – Melissa -- USA (New York)
4th – Sheri Payne -- Italy
5th – Erica Lustig -- Isreal

Contest ambassador: 
(voted most friendly by contestants)
Brandi Vinson -- USA (Oregon)

Best Dressed:
Manuel Alvarez -- Portugal

We have created a Karaoke Contest Group at YouTube as a central place where to upload and watch Karaoke World Contest related videos.

http://www.youtube.com/group/karaokecontest

Robert has created a MySpace web site with lot's of information on our singers, photos and links to our friends. You will definitely want to visit it!

http://myspace.com/karaokeworldcontestusa

You will also want to visit our KWCUSA MySpace web site

http://myspace.com/kwcusa

Bart also has many many photos from world finals posted at his web site for your viewing pleasure:

http://karaokenitelife.org

We would like to thank our sponsors and many others who have pitched in to make this all possible. First, we would like to thank our world finals location...

Murphys Law Irishpub.com at the HardRock paradise resort in Hollywood, FL
...with a special thanks to Matt Mearian and his crew.

We want to than the first round qualifier location: Legends Cafe in hollywood, FL A huge Thank you goes out to Miller Martinez who was so accomadating in the final hour in accepting our crew.


Thank you to our preferred hotel Ramada and both the locations: The Hollywood Beach Resort and their sales manager Danette Rousseau, they were The absolute best, and helped make our contest so great. They allowed us an area to gather and organize all thruout the weekend and we hosted the second round qualifier in their balroom. we also had help from the ramada downtown hollywood where many of our competitors stayed.

Thank you to our Regional hosts who were there to come thru for us and all of our singers, and who brought their best to the competition and displayed an extraordinary amount of comraderie and excitement.

A big thank you to Paul Fereti, Danielle, and their crew from Long Island Karaoke we couldn't have done it without you, and the utmost respect is given to yourexpertise in handling a competition.

And a super thanks goes out to Bart Loiacono from Karaoke Nitelife for all the prepartory work they did to get the word out about the competition and also for the signage they provided during the entire weekend. ...Bart's crew from Chicago were very enthusiastic and helped to keep everyone on their toes.

KWCUSA's biggest thanks goes out to the Karaoke World Contest's World Finals host himself, Robert Bedrossian for putting this all together for everyone. Robert is an official KWCUSA Tournament Host in Florida. ...And we thank KWCUSA host Boogieman George for his assitance to Robert.

We would also like to thank our judges...

Our judges for the world finals were:

Courtney Young, Miami's hottest daytime dj from...

ClearChannel Big 105.9

Kathy Kozak, Florida Grand Opera voice coach formerly w/ the Juliard school

Bobby Vinton, 30 yr veteran recording artist & talent scout for the HardRock

Our thanks also go out to two fantastic film crews:

Thanks to JR Roberson and his crew from Huckaby Productions Orlando, FL

And to Kelly Shimoda for her wonderful coverage of the goings on behind the scenes thruout the weekend.
Kelly's work may be found at:
Versa Images, Digital Railroad, and at Light Stalkers

KWCUSA, on behalf of the Karaoke World Consortium, would like to extend our remaining thanks to: You, the visitor to this web site; Our tournament hosts and their personel; The sponsors of individual singers who helped with entry fees, and other expenses; All of our singers who entered, The venues of our event, The many tournament judges; To the media and newspapers who helped to spread the word; And all the karaoke junkies and fans everywhere in the world who follow this contest.

2006 Nationals were held as announced: June 15th-18th, 2006 in Muncie Indiana, see Red Hot Karaoke (www.redhotkaraoke.net). Dave has sent us a listing of the National Finalists Standings by email, below is the summary of the top five singers.

Click on names for more information.

Female
1. Pasha Moore from Anderson, Indiana
2. Brandi Vinson from Sweet Home, Oregon
3. Amenda Rehkop from Strumbaugh St. James, Missouri
4. Traci Stine from Farmland, Indiana
5. Lori Wright from Muncie, Indiana
 
Male
1. Raymond "RCA" Ancheta from Kealia, Hawaii
2. Mike Joye from Augusta, Georgia
3. J D Hoffman from St.James, Missouri
4. Bread Sweat from Matthews, Indiana
5. Todd Berry from Muncie, Indiana

Old NEWS:KWCUSA and other original international contest event partners found it impossible to continue past 2005 under control of the founding partner so we created a new, TRUELY international organization continue the tradition for the sake of our singers and hosts and fans.

KWCUSA is continueing on course, representing the USA. KWCUSA hosted the 2006 Karaoke World Finals ..and will again every few years, repeating in rotation with other nations. The 2006 Karaoke World Contest World Finals was hosted by our KWCUSA hosts in Miami Florida under the direction of Robert Bedrossian. 2006 world finals were open to all singers from all (other) nations.


At present there are several other nations who are with us in breaking away and forming a new international organization (Karaoke World Consortium) and a new contest called the Karaoke World Contest. All other nations are hereby requested and encouraged to join us. (Australia will host the world finals in 2007, and Austria will host in 2008.)

We ask for your patience while the information found at this site regarding our new world finals is updated. New information will appear here.

If you are interested in representing your country as a national host, please send an email to fjdavies@yahoo.com with complete information regarding your company.

For assistance in translating between languages please try:

Altavista Babelfish
Freetranslator
Google Language Tools


KWCUSA team members who represented America at
the 2005 Karaoke World Championships

     
Click on our singer's photographs for more information about them.

Michael Kelly, of Oregon
Placed in the top 10 at KWC 2005

Timothy Duff Morrison, of Alabama
Placed fourth at KWC 2005

Herman Marable Jr., of Michigan


Click here to meet all of our singers from 2005 KWCUSA National Finals.
KWCUSA internet radio, DJ's and producers wanted!

New! KWCUSA would like to announce that Venues, Clubs and KJ's who would like to participate but are either unable to commit to specific dates or would prefer to pay a fee themselves rather than charge singers a fee, may now choose to become affiliated with us as a sponsor! Yes, for a fee, they may hold pre-trials events and sponsor 6 singers into our regular tournament events held by our official KWCUSA hosts.
Click here for more information.

The 2005 season over in the USA!
Prepare for the coming season!
Find your region's current contests by clicking here

Click on your region in the map,
...then scroll down to locate a host in your state.

Contact hosts for complete and updated details regarding the venues, and dates for our final events.

Many of our finals events are open to new entries from regions and states which are unrepresented. Contact your local Regional Finals Host today and ask if you can enter your Regional Finals as a self-sponsored wild card entry representing your state. Singers from Alaska, Hawaii, and our Regions 9 and 10 may contact us regarding entering our USA Finals May 27-28 in Tumwater WA in the same manner. Our aim is to include as many singers as possible, but hosts may be limiting the number of new entries to about a half dozen per state or region so act now to reserve your turn at the mic.

First place winners at 2004 USA Nationals

Bret Harmon and Heidi Ulrich

(Click on Bret to visit his website.)

Bret Harmon placed 3rd in the men's division at the 2004 Karaoke World Championships. Way to go Bret! Heidi sang her way right into finals, ...ranking her among the top 15 karaoke singers in the world in the womens division. KWCUSA thanks them both for representing America!

Jessica, Andrea, and DeJaneira
KWCUSA Kid's Karaoke 2005 National Champions

KJ's and Clubs! Click here to SIGN-UP as a KWCUSA tournament host now!

Articles on KWC 2005.

Nortwest Karaoke & Entertainment Guide.
September 2005

March 2005

Rachel takes World Karaoke title! at:Ireland Online

Check the story from Florida at:Miami New Times
Story on KWC in North Carolina at:MountainX

Articles on KWC 2004.

Story on KWC 2004 at Reuters Reuters
Story on KWC 2004 at MS NBC MS NBC
Story on KWC 2004 at ABC News ABC News

Articles on KWC 2003.
Spin Magazine has published a great article written by Ben Kaplan on the KWC finals last July entitled...We Wiil Rock You!
Did you read the the Reuters news article at CNN?
(...It's gone now, but can still be found at: SMH Australia.)