Going into his senior project, Donnie Brearton, a student at Vets High School, had big aspirations: to hold a statewide singing competition. Now, this Friday, he will see this dream realized as five finalists battle it out on stage to be the first winner of Vets’ “The Voice.”

In December, Brearton had reached out to the music community calling for talented high school students from across the state to audition. Twenty-four students auditioned for the competition. Although several of them were from Vets, students came from schools such as Lincoln High School, Mt. Hope, Cumberland, Cranston West, Classical, East Providence High School, Paul Cuffee and West Warwick High School.

Brearton, along with his senior project advisor Nancy Kennedy, choir director at Vets, chose 14 singers who all performed last Friday night in front of more than 100 people for the “blind auditions.” To uphold the professional feeling Brearton was striving for, he reached out to music educators to judge the competition, each choosing one finalist, with the last finalist being decided by the audience. The judges were Nicolette Mingels, who is currently a senior music education major at URI and student teaching at Ponaganset Middle School; Glenn Shaffer who was been a music educator in Warwick Public Schools for the past 16 years; Frank Pisaturo, the choral director at Scituate Middle School; and Jacqueline Soares the choral director at Pilgrim High School.

“It’s been so stressful getting everything together,” Brearton said. “We have a lot of different voices, genres and styles. It will be tough to choose a winner.”

Alongside organizing the entire event, Brearton will also be singing and dancing with the Vets Dance Team at Friday’s finale, as the audience votes for the winner.

Kennedy said, “I am amazed at the amount of work he has put into this. He is the producer, the director, the stage manager; he’s everything and he’s doing it all very well.”

She said when Brearton first approached her he had this “vision” of exactly how he wanted this competition to go and he has since achieved it.

“He has really been problem solving and very detail oriented. He set out to make this a big event and it is. We all love high school talent shows, but this is much more than a high school talent show,” Kennedy said.

Because Brearton would like to enter “show biz” after graduation, Kennedy believes this has been the perfect experience to acclimate Brearton to all the different facets of putting on a show.

“We have some very impressive talent. Everyone is bringing their A-game and they are feeling the heat of competition,” Kennedy said.

“I hope everyone comes out on Friday to support us,” Brearton said.

Over the weekend the five finalists had private lessons with Kennedy and Brearton to help improve their performance both vocally and visually to prepare for the finale.

The Vets’ “The Voice” finale is this Friday night, March 4, in the Vets auditorium from 6 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $5 at the door. The winner will be chosen by the audience live tweeting their favorites. Molly O’Brien from Channel 10 will emcee the event.

The finalists include Aryn Ryan from Cumberland High School who will be performing “Not About Angels”; Abbey Cambra from Vets performing “Toxic”; Alexia Muniz from West Warwick High School performing “Don’t Rain on My Parade”; Jason Tuttle from Vets performing “All of Me”; and Rosealina Ortiz performing “No One.”