News

Radford Collegian Halimah Kyrgios (Class of 2007) has done extremely well on Prime7’s popular singing competition, The Voice.

After completing the blind auditions, the show’s four judges – Rita Ora, Guy Sebastian, Keith Urban and Jessica Mauboy – selected a total of 51 artists but then had to whittle it down to five each. Halimah was the first to compete for her spot in Rita Ora’s top five, singing against Irena Lysiuk (28) of Queensland, and Rebecca O’Connor (45) of Western Australia.

The older sister of tennis champ Nick Kyrgios (Class of 2012), Halimah is an experienced musical performer overseas but suggested this was her time to establish her own identity here in Australia.

On the episode that aired on Tuesday, 24 August, Halimah made it through the next stage of The Voice, giving her further opportunity to show Australia her talent.

She performed a powerful rendition of the Aretha Franklin classic ‘Respect’, trying to persuade British superstar Ora to give her one of the top five spots on her team. Ora said she had seen a ‘little fire’ in Halimah that she wanted the rest of Australia to recognise and included her in her Top Five. In response, Halimah said she was ‘excited to have more moments of coming out of my shell’.

A week later, on Sunday, 30 August, Halimah sang ‘This is Me’ from The Greatest Showman and had the audience on its feet. But given the fierce competition that is The Voice, Halimah unfortunately did not make it through to the next round on the Monday night. Nevertheless. she received several compliments about the power and strength of her voice, flawless performance and courage from all four judges.

Halimah said she learnt a lot from The Voice about who she wanted to be as an artist.

We are extremely proud of Halimah for her efforts in the competition. It was an absolute joy to watch her perform and we wish her well in her future endeavours.