JUST WARMING UP
Emily Luther’s run on ‘The Voice’ comes to an end, but the Woonsocket native says her journey is just beginning
WOONSOCKET – Don’t worry about Emily Luther.
The city native’s journey on national television’s search for the next American singing sensation came to an end Tuesday night on “The Voice,” but she’s not down and she’s not out. She’s not even surprised. “I was just being myself and going with the flow and you never know what they’re going to go with,” says Luther. “The journey is just beginning for me and I’m really grateful for the opportunity to have been on the show. It’s such a blessing for me.”
Luther, 25, competed on Adam Levine’s team on the 13th season of NBC-TV’s hit talent show and sang her way through four rounds. Levine cut her loose in the playoff rounds, a phase of the contest when strategy may matter more to Levine than talent as he positions himself for victory against competing teams, led by celebrity judges Jennifer Hudson, Blake Shelton and Miley Cyrus.
The local vocalist landed a spot on the show weeks ago, opening for the blind auditions with a powerful and inventive version of the jazz standard, “Summertime,” a Gershwin melody that dates back to the 1930s.
In more recent rounds of the competitive singoff, Luther offered renditions of Adele’s “Send My Love to Your New Lover,” Pink’s “Glitter in the Air” and “Love Song,” by the rock band The Cure, popular in the 1980s.
“I’m proud of what I did and stayed true to myself”
Luther’s experience as a classically trained vocalist stood out amid a crowd of competitors who were much easier to pigeonhole – and market for record sales – as country, soul and hip-hoppy R&B artists.
“The results, it’s one of those things – I’m proud of what I did and stayed true to myself, but it all depends on what the judges are looking for this year,” says Luther.
Luther thinks of herself as a sort of three-way hybrid of Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion and Annie Lennox.
The only surprise for Luther was that she lasted as long as she did moving in her lane of the musical highway.
“I didn’t expect it to resonate with everyone,” she said in a phone interview. “I’m surprised by actually how far I made it with that sound.”
One of the high points of the show for Luther was working with country music star Kelly Clarkson, who rose to fame as the original “American Idol,” winning the inaugural 2002 season of the Fox Network show that became a template for the network talent extravaganzas. Clarkson appeared on this season’s installment of “The Voice” as a guest mentor to various contestants.
“That’s one of the most memorable moments of my career,” said Luther. “I’ve been such a fan of hers since ‘Idol’ and to just spend time with her and get advice from her was surreal. You never realize it when you’re in the moment, you don’t know who the mentor is going to be and what the impact will be but she’s one of my favorites and I’m super-happy about it. What’s next for Luther? For starters, she’s due in the city Friday to help the Blackstone Valley Tourism Council kick off the seasonal Polar Express train rides from One Depot Square. She’s scheduled to arrive about 5:30 p.m. to schmooze with fans and sing a couple of holiday tunes.
She’s also booked for a fullfledged holiday show at Savini’s Pomodoro Italian Kitchen & Bar, 476 Rathbun St., on Dec. 7.
But Luther says she’s got “a couple of things on the back burner” that she’s not presently at liberty to talk about. A couple of career avenues may have opened up as a result of the contacts she developed by competing on “The Voice.”
The daughter of Donald and Denise Luther, Emily is a 2010 graduate of Woonsocket High School and grew up on Glen Road. She and her family now live in Coventry.
She got her start as a singer in musical theater as a member of the Encore Repertory Company, the house troupe at the Stadium Theatre. She appeared in a musical version of “Cinderella” at the Stadium when she was nine years old and that was it – she’d been bitten by the bug for singing. “The rest is history,” she says. Luther attended the Berklee School of Music in Boston for a year after high school and later got a recording contract with TV talk queen Ellen Degeneres, in addition to a music-writing contract with Universal Studios. All that’s over now and she’s back in Rhode Island after setting up shop in the Los Angeles area for a while.
Luther says she broke away from her professional relationships on the West Coast because she didn’t like the way her promoters were trying to package her for the mass market. She says they told her she was “too heavy” and that her makeup “wasn’t great.”
Yup, you’d think that was weird, too, if you saw Luther sparkling on national TV.
Luther resisted the pressure to put on a phony image, insisting on “being myself.”
As a singer, Luther says, she’s decided who she is, and she intends on staying true to form – forever.
“Some people think if you’re not mainstream you’re not happy or you’re not fulfilled,” says Luther. “As long as you’re making money and supporting yourself, that’s all that counts. Whatever you can do to make a living as a singer, that’s what I think it’s all about.”