Morristown Onstage 2026: Meet the 19-and-over finalists

 

They have day jobs. Some have kids. They all have dreams.

Next week, they will strive to fulfill them at the 19th annual Morristown Onstage. Here are the eight acts from the age 19-and-over category competing at the Mayo Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026.

Presented by the Morris Educational Foundation, the contest has raised more than $1.6 million for programs in the Morris School District.

Any amateur performer who lives, works or attends school in Morristown, Morris Township or Morris Plains, or is a graduate of Morristown High School, can audition.

This year’s show has 14 finalists. (Read our profile of the 18-and-under acts.) They are competing for $1,000 top prizes in each age group, as chosen by a panel of entertainment professionals, and a $500 audience choice award, to be decided by texted votes inside the Mayo Performing Arts Center. 

One promising performer will go home with a $250 Rossoff Rising Star Award, picked by the Morristown Onstage Steering Committee. The show also will feature a preview of Fiddler on the Roof, next month’s musical at Morristown High.

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The Colleagues: Emilia Domanowski and Adam Casadevall
Vocals/Guitar

She loves to sing. He loves to accompany singers on guitar.

For Emilia Domanowski and Adam Casadevall, it was a match made at Morristown High School. Emilia teaches French. Adam, MHS ’07, is a computer technician for the district. Last year, he offered to back her at a school performance. They clicked.

On Feb. 24, they’ll return as The Colleagues, covering Me and Bobby McGee — the Janis Joplin classic, with a subtle nod to the late Bob Weir. Adam is a Grateful Dead fan.

“Adam gave some good advice on how to make the sound work for my voice, and how to make it more unique,” Emilia says.

The Chatham native began singing as a child in the kids’ choir at St. Teresa’s in Summit, mentored by opera singer and choir director Angela Intili-Stokes. She later sang in a middle-school rock band and a high school select choir, and even performed a Russian song at Carnegie Hall — in her prom dress — placing second in an international Christian music competition.

Adam brings experience, too, having reached the finals in 2015 as part of an acoustic duo. He barely remembers that appearance, he was so nervous. “I’m much more comfortable this time around,” he says. — Kevin Coughlin

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McKenzie Hegarty
Vocalist

McKenzie Hegarty, 23, comes to the competition with a mile-long resume, and singing is just one of her many accomplishments.

As a 6th grader she starred as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. “Over the Rainbow was the first big solo that I sang and I fell in love with it. I wanted to backtrack and perform it for
Morristown OnStage,” she says.

Voice lessons, commercials, a television show and modeling explain her poise in the spotlight.  In 2020, she won the talent portion of the Miss New Jersey Teen competition and finished fourth overall. The University of Delaware grad, who works for a Morristown marketing firm, will vie for the title of Miss New Jersey in Ocean City this June. If she wins, the next stop will be the Miss America pageant in September.

Her ultimate goal is to become a broadcaster. In the meantime, she plans to do exactly as she did at last month’s Morristown Onstage Media Day, during a power a power outage.  “When the music cuts out, I just keep going.”  —Marion Filler

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Ashley Koning
Vocalist

If anyone should know who might win Morristown Onstage this month, it’s finalist Ashley Koning. As director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers, she spends her days measuring what resonates with voters. But on this night, political science takes a back seat to personal passion: She simply loves Maybe This Time from Cabaret.

“This is a song that I feel really deep down in my soul,” says Koning, who lives in Morristown with her husband, Matthew, and their son, William, an elementary school student in the Morris School District.

They say life begins at 40, and as Koning approaches that milestone, she’s felt a pull to reconnect with the theater kid inside her.

At Bridgewater-Raritan High School, she was nominated as a Paper Mill Rising Star for The Pirates of Penzance. She later trained operatically at Franklin & Marshall College, attending on a music scholarship while also studying politics.

“All my political science professors thought I was moving to New York to go on Broadway. And all my vocal coaches thought I was heading into politics,” Koning says. She insists the two worlds aren’t so different, each reflecting both the darkness and light of humanity. “I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have one without the other,” she says.

Declaring this her “year of yes,” Koning decided to audition. “It’s nice to come full circle and sing for my town, which I love,” she says. “And to sing for my little guy so he can see mommy on stage. And for my parents and my husband again. I feel really grateful and blessed that I get to do that.” — Kevin Coughlin

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Garrett Lash
Vocals, keyboard

With an unplugged electric keyboard as his only prop, Garrett Lash, 29, filled the Morristown High cafeteria with a no-frills delivery of Billy Joel’s Just the Way You Are during last month’s no-power Media Day.

“We’ll figure it out,” he insisted, and proceeded to fill the unglamorous space with more than enough voice to impress his fellow competitors.

Lash sang a capella at the University of South Carolina, and is in the choir at the Presbyterian Church in Morristown. But he was musically oriented way before that.

“I’ve been playing the piano since before I can remember, I think I was 3 or 4. And then I added singing at about 8 or 10. Like most kids, I started out with classical training but got bored with that pretty quick,” he recalls. Soon he was playing pop music, “things I was raised with, like classic rock, the Beatles and Billy Joel.”

After a few years away from music, he returned to New Jersey and open mics and small gigs. The Denville resident now plays and records with two groups, The Engineers in Whippany and Total System Failure in Wyckoff. A day job as a supply chain manager keeps the lights on; the choir and sundry gigs occupy his free time. Lash definitely has it all figured out. — Marion Filler

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Maralyn Miner
Dance

Maralyn Miner is a busy lady. She is the Chief Financial Officer at Morristown Medical Center, and otherwise likely to be at home with her husband and their two children, ages 1 and 5.

But when she’s not occupied with either one, she’s probably dancing. Miner and her dance partner Frank Cuba will perform La Cumparsita, widely considered the “anthem of tango,” at Morristown Onstage.

“Dance has been a passion of mine from a very young age. I started at 3, and competitively at 13, and through college,” Miner recalls. She was a member of the First Ladies dance team at George Washington University and competed nationally, “but not in ballroom dance,” she notes. The team’s specialties were Jazz, Hip Hop and Pom, a combination of both styles using pom-poms.

Adult life, a career and marriage intervened. But in 2019, Miner’s husband surprised her with ballroom lessons. “I just fell in love with the art form and realized it was something I could enjoy as an adult.” (Ballroom includes the American Smooth Style: Tango, foxtrot, waltz and Viennese waltz.)

For a time, Miner and her husband took lessons together, but it was difficult to continue together when the children came along. “He took a step back to enjoy his own hobbies and we gave each other the space to do what we both loved,” she explains. Her passion is tango.

“I loved Forever Tango on Broadway. I love watching Dancing with the Stars. I love the music and I love the style.”

Her colleagues at the hospital wanted her to audition last year, but a baby came along. They’ll be cheering for her and Cuba next week when they perform their routine. “I’m excited to share it with everybody,” Miner says.  — Marion Filler

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Fiona Quirk
Dancer

Fiona Quirk of Morristown is well acquainted with the MPAC stage.

Last December, the 21-year-old dancer performed there as a trainee with the New Jersey Ballet. She also has appeared onstage the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Her education includes the American Ballet Theater, Ellison Ballet School and the School of American Ballet. Her dance instructor, Maria Kowroski, retired as a principal dancer at the New York City Ballet Company to become artistic director of New Jersey Ballet.

On Feb. 24, Quirk will square off against seven other contenders in the 19 and older category, interpreting Any Other World by MIKA.

“Most people think of traditional ballet as a costume and pointed toes,” she says. “But it’s more than just tutus.”

Contemporary ballet, she explains, is freer and “more flowy.”

Quirk began dancing at age 8.  “I was born super flexible,” she says. But performing took its toll: Toe and ankle sprains, a fracture, a tear, physical therapy. Then, a setback that required surgery. “I had ‘Lisfranc dislocation.’ My bones were separating. I had to have a screw put in and wasn’t able to walk for a month.”

That was late 2023. Months later she staged a comeback, determined to achieve her goal of joining a professional dance company. Her injury informed her song selection.
“It’s about loss, hope and finding the light,” she says. “It was very relatable.”

Quirk has a degree in communications from the County College of Morris to go with her student dance awards. A victory at Morristown Onstage would validate her passion.

“I think winning in general would mean that everything I feel while dancing was passed onto the audience, which is the goal with arts — to connect with the audience and exert emotions and feelings,” she says.  — Ellen Wilkowe

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Spare Parts
Band

So, a lawyer, neuroscientist and a marketing guru walk onto a stage… No, really.

This trio assembled at the last-minute during last month’s Morristown Onstage Media Day, in a band reshuffling that also forced a change in name.

A five-piece cover band originally listed as Suburban Stereo will now perform minus two, as Spare Parts.

“I am the spare part,” joked newcomer guitarist Mark Hanna of Morris Township, the lawyer component of the group — and an entertainment lawyer, to boot.

The reshuffling followed Suburban Stereo’s audition, when some of the members discovered a scheduling conflict with the Feb. 24th show date, said vocalist Alyssa Wilson of Montclair. “We found subs for the event, but since the group members had changed out, we decided to go with a different name.”

With Rob Miller handling bass, Spare Parts will wax early ’90s nostalgia through 4 Non Blondes’ hit What’s Up. Morristown OnStage is a first for all three performers, who will compete against seven other contestants in the 19 and over category.

“We really like to get the crowd involved,” said Wilson, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York who also is trained in operatic singing

All three musicians identify as “from the flannel era.” Miller took up bass in college and boasts two decades of plucking. In his law practice, Hanna actually represents one of his guitar heroes, Alex Skolnick from the thrash metal band Testament. — Ellen Wilkowe

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Tay
Vocalist

Tay (Tashia Davis), a long-time Morristown resident and alumna of Morristown High School, likes to keep things simple. The busy mother of boys ages 6 and 12 dispenses with her surname and lets her singing take the spotlight.

Now that both children are in school, Tay’s looking to return to what she loves to do. “At various times throughout my life, I’ve sung at Bethel Church and Calvary Baptist Church and I used to record,” she says.

Her current position at the Office of Public Assistance in Morristown keeps her on her toes, and ferrying the boys to afterschool activities rounds out her days. Still, Tay is setting her sights on a music career. “I aspire to get back in a band, to letting the world hear my voice, more seeing me, more posting on social media. In 2026, my face will be more,” she says with a smile.

Tay’s performance on Media Day, bereft of accompaniment in the cavernous cafeteria, was compelling. Her powerful, effortless delivery of Olivia Dean’s A Couple Minutes was the perfect choice to relaunch her musical aspirations. — Marion Filler

Fourteen acts will compete next Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, for cash and glory in the 19th annual Morristown Onstage, a benefit for the Morris Educational Foundation. Tickets: $41-$97. At 7 pm in the Mayo Performing Arts Center, 100 South St., Morristown.

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