Hugh Wilson (6)

Born to an Anglican minister and a nurse from Tanzania, Hugh spent his early years moving between churches in remote parts of Australia before moving to Sydney. Hugh learned the trumpet, sang boy-soprano in church choirs, and shockingly for an Australian, chose singing in a school musical over state track meets. At 19, Hugh won the male vocal category of "Star Search", in Australia as the U.S., a nationally televised viewer-voted talent competition. Hugh was immediately scooped up by one of Australia's premiere management companies, and recorded “Illiad,” a critically praised debut on Polydor Records. There followed several recordings with his brother Derek, and guitarist Michael Dolce, with their bands "The Blue Phoenix", "Drowning Jester", and "King Luan"; as well as recording "Gnome" with jazz saxophonist Spike Mason. He also developed as a producer/engineer working with artists such as Sarah Blasko, Katie Prior, Luke Pittman, T J Eckleberg and Christian acts Receiver, Prayerworks, Melanie Cooke, and David Holmes. Hugh later teamed up with the Leigh brothers of Pseudo Echo to form the band, Vertigo, and enjoyed a brief stay in the Australian charts. Alongside all this Hugh was an in-demand session vocalist, singing literally hundreds of Australian and Asian commercials. In 2000 Hugh left Australian shores for Europe, Singapore and the USA. Teaming up with Mark Moffatt in Nashville and co-producing Nemesis Rising's Joshua and Jacob Miller. A move to New York resulted in breaking into the New York commercial scene as a session vocalist, while becoming a Worship Pastor for Christian City Church Manhattan, and producing "Peace", "Radiate", "C3USA" and Steve Deal's "Edge of The Ocean" & Cure for Gravity" CDs within the C3 movement, as well as writing/recording with Maria Christensen, Tommy Zano, Sovory, Blu Sanders, Willamerika, Ben Butler, Paul Colman, Ryan Truso, Alex Forbes and Tracee Beazer with many projects still in the pipeline. In 2004 he and Sanders wrote songs for an independent release, "Unidirectional." And in 2005-06 Hugh joined Lenny Kravitz's band as a vocalist for a US tour with Aerosmith. A frontman again, in September Hugh released a contemporary Christian CD "Into Light" and has teamed up with his lovely wife Anne, talented jazz bassist Mark Lau, and drummer Mike Flaherty for live shows. ~ Seth Amgott ~