Lea Salonga's duet with concertgoer goes viral… again
A video uploaded three years ago has belatedly gone viral.
Now zinging through the Internet and popping up on social media is the duet of Lea Salonga with Jared Young, then an aspiring stage actor.
The video was taken during Lea’s 2011 concert at the Brigham Young University concert hall in Utah. It shows the Broadway star with Jared singing “A Whole New World,” Lea’s hit song from the Disney animated movie “Aladdin.”
100,000 views in 2 days
Since ViralNova chose to resurface the video in a post dated August 27, the story has been picked up by at least seven other sites, and shared on social.
Jared, who hosts the video on his YouTube channel, exclusively told Yahoo Philippines, that views have been steadily growing since he first put it up.
But, with the recent resurfacing, the video “has jumped almost 100,000 views in the last two days,” he said. “It has spurts of popularity depending on what website features it.”
To date, the video has had more than 1 million views.
Jared tells Yahoo his story
Jared also told Yahoo that when he saw Lea in concert in 2011, he had no idea she was going to pick an audience member to sing with her.
“I was visiting home [in Provo, Utah] and she just happened to be performing that night at my Alma mater (BYU) and a friend offered me an extra ticket,” he said.
When the time came for Lea to choose someone to sing with her, Jared said he was “completely shocked” because he thought she would ask a member of her band to share the front of the stage.
‘Pick me!’ he shouted to Lea
“When she asked the audience for a volunteer… I managed to start screaming ‘LEA, PICK ME!!’ She chose me and I ran onstage out of breath and still a bit shocked at what was about to happen. We bantered a bit about my excitement then she handed me a lyric sheet and we began,” he wrote in his exchange with Yahoo.
What followed blew even Lea away.
“I’ve been singing ‘A Whole New World’ and calling up someone from the audience for, I don’t know, 6 or so years, and I never know what to expect,” Lea told the audience in the video.
“Cos I’ve had it go really, really, really great like tonight,” she continued amid cheers from the crowd, “and I’ve had it go really, really, really not so great.
“And it’s always wonderful when the guy comes up here is actually really, really good so Jared, thank you!” she said.
Not Pinoy but ‘Samoan-Caucasian’
Jared, a professional actor who’s performed in stage musicals like “The Lion King” and the UK/US/Asia tour of Green Day's stage production of “American Idiot,” said in his original YouTube post that he grew up dreaming of playing Aladdin.
Three years on, he told Yahoo in an online message, “I was among the final few actors being considered to originate the role of Aladdin in the new Broadway show here in New York, but I wasn't cast and the role went to the very talented Adam Jacobs (Interestingly enough I believe Adam is of Filipino descent).”
Jared has been mistaken for a Filipino because of his looks.
“I don't have any Filipino heritage as I'm half Samoan/half Caucasian, but I hope to travel there as I hear it's a beautiful part of the world, rich in culture and talent,” he said.
Follow Jared Young on Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to his YouTube channel.
