In this year's season of Canadian Idol, now underway on CTV, an Etobicoke high school has contributed three contestants to the top-24.

That's actually more than any other Canadian community, let alone high school.

Only two of them remain in the running going into this week's round-of-16, and they are a brother duo, Oliver and Sebastian Pigott, ages 27 and 25, respectively. Both were set to sing with the final eight last night (Tuesday), after the first eight went Monday night.

A third, Tetiana Ostapowych, was eliminated following the first round of top-24.

All three went to the Toronto District School Board's Etobicoke School of the Arts (ESA), on Royal York Road, just north of the Queensway.

"Actually Sebastian and I saw Tetiana in Toronto (at the auditions), and we obviously went over - because I hadn't seen her in years," said Oliver in a phone interview last week. "As a matter of fact I saw one or two other people from ESA auditioning that day as well. That was really cool."

Not only did Oliver's performance of Elton's John's Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word last week draw enough phone-in votes from viewers to get him into this week's Top-16 round, but the judges liked it so much he was one of four Idol contestants selected to give an encore during the results show.

His brother, Sebastian, wasn't selected for an encore but his version of the Lovin Spoonful's Daydream was good enough to keep him out of the bottom six vote getters (from which the bottom four were eliminated).

"It (ESA) was a brilliant school," Sebastian said. "Being an arts school, it was kind of a safe haven for us weird artist types. It was absolutely awesome.

"What was amazing about the acting program there was the opportunity they gave us, if we wanted to use it. If you had the motivation to put on your own play, they'd give you a theatre to do it in, they'd give you the cast, they'd give you the wardrobe - whatever you want. So it was pretty awesome. I made a lot of good friends that are doing really well now in the business."

Besides being a musician, Sebastian is an actor and a playwright with two of his plays - The New Thing I'm Doing and Admiral Dink and the Seventh Fleet - having been performed as part of DropShip Entertainment's Upstart Cabaret evenings which have been held at various venues, including the Gladstone Hotel.

And very recently, he achieved another milestone.

"I just sold my first screenplay," he said, adding that "it's a modern western set in Ontario."

"So that'll be shooting in the spring and I'm going to be playing the lead role too. I'm pretty stoked about that."

The timing, he said, couldn't have been better.

"I was so flat broke that my phone got cut off, and so I haven't got it hooked up again yet. I just picked up my screenplay cheque so I can get my phone hooked up again."

While the two brothers may be in a friendly competition against each other on Idol, they're more used to playing with, rather than against, each other.

A band they had as teenagers called Laughing Sam's Dice, which was named after a Jimi Hendrix song, "used to play the club scene in Toronto," said Oliver.

"We did the Black Swan on the Danforth, the El Mocambo, we did the Great Hall over on Queen Street, right near Ossington, we did the Opera House."

Sebastian added that they made a couple of appearances on the old CBC trend-setting youth talk show Jonovision and opened up for acts such as the Headstones.

After a while, however, Sebastian decided to switch gears while Oliver took advantage of an opportunity that came up in Los Angeles.

He did an album in 2005 that he released independently online, followed by another compilation of acoustic songs.

"For different reasons, they both received very complimentary feedback," he said.

Prior to coming back to Toronto for Idol, he had been living for the past couple of years in the U.K.

"Canadian music in general was doing really well in the U.K.," he said. "I wanted to see, being a Canadian myself, how my stuff would go over.

"I booked my own tour. I started in Scotland, worked my way down, and got really good response. I settled in London, eventually, after doing the cross-U.K. thing, and I just basically played at least three or four nights a week. I had a nice consistent crowd."

Sebastian, meanwhile, decided to turn to his thespian roots which he had developed in high school.

"I got back into acting in a big way and I fell in love with it.

"Music for the past few years has been something I've kept up doing but it's not something I've pursued as a career."

In fact, he probably wouldn't have even auditioned for Idol, if his brother hadn't come back from England.

"I really only came out because my brother was doing it, and I hadn't seen him in such a long time that we wanted to spend some time together."

Oliver was enticed by Idol, he said, because of the introduction of instruments and also "being able to play on television, for the kind of audience that Idol has, is a wonderful opportunity."

The Pigott brothers first stay in Etobicoke was cut tragically short by the untimely death of their father shortly after the family had purchased their home.

Their father was a real estate agent who could play a mean blues harmonica and owned an extensive blues vinyl collection.

After their father passed away, their mom rented out the house and moved the family to Portugal, where the family had no ties to other than being a favourite vacation spot.

"Pigott's an Irish name, so we're all Irish on my father's side and my mother is British," said Sebastian.

It was there, the brothers began their burgeoning career in earnest, actually managing to get some opening gigs at local bars as pre-teens (even then going by the stage name of Laughing Sam's Dice).

"That's where we started playing music," said Sebastian.

When they moved back to their Etobicoke home half a decade later, it wasn't surprising, therefore, that both enrolled in the Etobicoke School of the Arts.

There's no doubt that while most of the contestants are gunning to be the last Idol standing, a final-two appearance would be just fine for the Pigott brothers.

"Who knows, you never know how that's going to pan out," said Oliver. "I'm just happy to still be here and to be able to share the stage with so many talented people. But that would definitely be wild if my brother and I were in the top two."

And who would win? That's when the sibling rivarly ends and the respect starts to show.

"Him," said Sebastian.

Countered Oliver: "My brother's a pretty tough act to follow."

 

The Pigott brothers and Tetiana Ostapowych, 25, are part of a five-member Toronto contingent to make the top 24.

Still in the running are:

- Scarborough resident Omar Lunan, 29, who split his high school years between Cedarbrae and West Hill Collegiate Institute.

- and Mookie Morris, 19, who split his high school years between Northern Secondary School with a final year at City Academy.

You can read about the other Toronto Idol contestants on our website at www.insidetoronto.com