Wellesley Idol began in 2005 as the brainchild of Marg Runstedler and the Wellesley ABC Festival. The competition has changed its format over the years, but it has remained committed to bringing the community together and encouraging young singers to get up and share their voice.
Our mission is to:
- celebrate the joy of music among our community’s youth
- help young singers develop confidence, determination, and resilience
- provide friendly, positive feedback from experienced music industry professionals
- nurture the development of young singers with aspirations of building larger audiences, through scholarships and mentoring
Whether you sing for family, for your church congregation or to a growing audience of fans, we want to help you become more confident and more dazzling, and help you create a great experience for your audience.
Our program is presented each year thanks to 100% volunteer effort and the financial support of our sponsors, which has included the Wellesley ABC Festival since the beginning of our program.
Past participants in Wellesley Idol have gone on to record and release music and perform on stages near and far, but whether or not our participants choose to pursue a career in music, we love to help them find their own voice and entertain an audience.
To that end, we introduced private mentoring to Wellesley Idol in 2016 for the group of singers preparing to sing at the Semifinal event. Not only have our performers benefited from greater confidence on stage, our audiences have enjoyed more engaging performances. This mentoring is provided by our team of volunteer mentors, at no cost to the participants, and is a component of Wellesley Idol of which we are extremely proud.
We truly hope that the Wellesley Idol experience is a positive one for all of our participants, and for those who are not selected to advance to the semifinal or final rounds, we hope you’ll consider returning in future competitions.