John Holiday finished fifth on The Voice. In 2026 he sang LA Opera's Akhnaten

John Holiday sang “Misty” at 35 and finished fifth on The Voice

Holiday was 35 when he sang “Misty” in the first blind auditions of The Voice's 19th season, on October 19, 2020. Gwen Stefani and John Legend turned, Kelly Clarkson pressed her button but was blocked, and he joined Legend's team. He sang “Summer Soft” in the battles, “All by Myself” in the knockouts and “Fly Me to the Moon” in the live playoffs, where the public voted him through. In the semifinal he sang “Fix You.” In the finale on December 14 he sang “Halo” and his original song “Where Do We Go,” and the next night he sang “Bridge Over Troubled Water” with Legend. He finished fifth.

• John Holiday: career and music

He found opera as a boy soloist with the Houston Symphony

Holiday was born in 1985 in Rosenberg, Texas, near Houston. His grandmother was the pianist and music director at Missionary Baptist Church, and he taught himself piano by imitating her. With the Fort Bend Boys Choir he became a treble soloist in the Houston Symphony's performances of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust, with Denyce Graves as Marguérite. “I'd never seen anyone who looked like me doing what she did,” he said later. “I decided that was what I wanted to do.” A countertenor is the highest male voice, singing in a range that overlaps with female voices. Holiday studied at Southern Methodist University and earned an Artist Diploma in Opera Studies at Juilliard in 2014. In February 2020 he sang in the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin's Eurydice at LA Opera, and in December 2021 he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in the same opera.

He sang the pharaoh Akhnaten at LA Opera

Akhnaten is Philip Glass's 1984 opera about a pharaoh of the 14th century BCE who tried to replace Egypt's many gods with one, the sun god Aten. It is the third of Glass's “portrait” operas, after Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha, and it is sung in Ancient Egyptian, Akkadian and Biblical Hebrew. LA Opera's revival of Akhnaten opened at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on February 28, 2026, with Holiday in the title role. The company first staged the production in 2016, with Anthony Roth Costanzo as Akhnaten. Phelim McDermott directed, Dalia Stasevska conducted, and juggling by Sean Gandini runs through the show. Holiday does not sing until about 35 minutes into the opera. Classical Voice North America wrote that he “showed he was more than ready, delivering a fearless performance.”

He sang Handel in Munich and released Over My Head

In July 2026 Holiday sang Ruggiero in Handel's Alcina for the Bayerische Staatsoper at the Nationaltheater in Munich. Ruggiero is a knight who forgets his past and his fiancée under the spell of the sorceress Alcina. OperaWire's critic saw the July 16 performance and wrote that Holiday sang the aria “Verdi prati” “with unaffected simplicity, immaculate legato and a finely judged sense of inward reflection.” On July 17 PENTATONE released his album Over My Head, with the pianist Kevin Miller. It mixes spirituals, contemporary works and art song, with world premieres by Theo Morrison and Carlos Simon and arrangements by Holiday himself. On September 27 at The Wallis, in Los Angeles, he sang the world premiere of Simon's The Afterparty with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under Lina González-Granados.

• Listen to John Holiday on Apple Music

Kymberli Joye sang Simon’s Good News Mass with the Chicago Symphony

Kymberli Joye, from Windsor, Connecticut, was 26 when she sang “Run to You” in the blind auditions of The Voice's 15th season in 2018. Kelly Clarkson and Blake Shelton turned, Jennifer Hudson pressed her button but was blocked, and Joye joined Clarkson's team. In the Top 11 week she sang “Break Every Chain,” and her single reached number 8 on iTunes. She went out in the semifinal, where she sang “Never Alone.” On July 31, 2026, Marin Alsop led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia in Carlos Simon's Good News Mass, a 2025 work based on the Catholic Mass and sung in English. Joye was the soprano soloist, with the tenors Zebulon Ellis and Bernard Holcomb and the Adrian Dunn Singers. Simon played a Hammond organ on stage, as he did growing up in the Pentecostal church where his father and grandfather preached. Joye rose to sing two numbers with the chorus, “Oh, Give Thanks” and “Lord, We Thank You.”

• Kymberli Joye: career and music

Michael Lynche sang Kings of Soul with the Baltimore Symphony

Michael Lynche auditioned for the ninth season of American Idol in Orlando in July 2009 with “Unchained Melody.” On April 7, 2010, after he sang “Eleanor Rigby” in the Lennon–McCartney week, he had the fewest votes, and the judges used their only save on him. He was the second finalist in the show's history to get the judges' save, and he finished fourth. In January 2026 he sang in Kings of Soul with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, a Pops program of soul music from the 1960s through the 1980s by Black male artists. Byron Stripling conducted 23 selections by 18 “Kings of Soul,” from Smokey Robinson and the Miracles to Michael Jackson, in arrangements by Jeff Tysik. Lynche, known to Idol viewers as “Big Mike,” sang hits by Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield, James Brown and Al Green, with Chester Gregory and Darren Lorenzo as the other singers. He also sang the evening's only song from the Great American Songbook, “Try a Little Tenderness.” The concerts played at Strathmore on January 16 and at the Meyerhoff on January 17 and 18.

• Michael Lynche: career and music

Brooke Simpson sang Radiohead with the Minnesota Orchestra

Brooke Simpson, from Hollister, North Carolina, is a member of the Haliwa-Saponi tribe. She sang Demi Lovato's “Stone Cold” in her blind audition for The Voice's 13th season in 2017, and all four coaches turned. She joined Miley Cyrus's team and finished third. She later finished fourth on America's Got Talent in 2021 and played Roger Sherman in the Broadway revival of 1776. On March 21, 2025, she was one of three singers, with Khalil Overton and Rich Saunders, in Steve Hackman's Brahms X Radiohead with the Minnesota Orchestra at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. Hackman's piece, for full orchestra and three solo singers, fuses Brahms's First Symphony with Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer. Stage lighting showed whether the music came from Brahms or from Radiohead, and YourClassical reported a capacity audience.

• Brooke Simpson: career and music

India Carney was on the bill for Hackman’s Bartók X Björk

India Carney, from Brooklyn, was 21 when she sang “New York State of Mind” in the blind auditions of The Voice's eighth season in 2015, and all four coaches turned. She joined Christina Aguilera's team, sang “Hurt” in the live playoffs and went out in the semifinal, in the Top 5. Her program biography for the Minnesota Orchestra says she has toured and performed with Olivia Rodrigo, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey and Aguilera, and has coached singers on The Voice and American Idol. The orchestra's program for Hackman's Bartók X Björk on January 3, 2026, named her as one of three singers, with Erin Bentlage and Malia Civetz. That piece fuses Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra with songs from Björk's first three albums, Debut, Post and Homogenic.

• India Carney: career and music

LaKisha Jones was on the bill for the North Carolina Symphony’s Bravo Broadway

LaKisha Jones, from Flint, Michigan, auditioned for the sixth season of American Idol with Aretha Franklin's “Think,” and Simon Cowell said he “loved this girl.” In the Bon Jovi week she sang “This Ain't a Love Song,” and she finished fourth in 2007. In September 2007 the Broadway musical The Color Purple announced that she would take over its church soloist role from January 9, 2008, and she also played Sofia at matinées in place of Chaka Khan. The North Carolina Symphony's program for three Bravo Broadway concerts on February 13 and 14, 2026, at Meymandi Concert Hall in Raleigh named Jones as a vocalist, with Morgan James, Hugh Panaro and the conductor Sophie Mok. It listed the Funny Girl overture, songs from The Wiz and Hamilton, and music from Wicked and The Phantom of the Opera.

• LaKisha Jones: career and music