Better than Susan Boyle......at age 10!!!

I almost can't believe this voice, or that it's coming from the mouth of a 10-year-old girl, but.....

Her name is Jackie Evancho. All I can say is, wow. Just wow.

 

Ah, nervous vibrato. I remember that well.

She's got a lovely sense of pitch and nice tone though I want her to OPEN HER MOUTH and let the sound out instead of keeping it behind her lips. She's been taught by someone to sound older by making the tone darker. That will happen naturally with age, and when it does, her (current) technique will hurt her. I'll be interested to see how her timbre develops as she goes through puberty - girls' voices develop and deepen too, though more subtly male voices, obviously, and I really hope she has a good voice teacher who will train her with the eye on the long-term and not on right now.

I do hate putting kid singers on a platform like this though, because it's just not comparable to adult singers because of vocal maturity and length of training issues (the exception is boy sopranos, who have music written specifically for their voice type - it's a hard career knowing you're done at 13 when your voice drops). My guess is she's not quite ready vocally to handle the really hard end of the repertoire yet, which is absolutely fine cause she's 10. But in the annals of opera music, that's a really easy song. Beautiful, but simple. A fair number of talented kids exist that can do what she did at that quality - they just don't get shepherded onto YouTube.

Being a good, adult classical singer is damned hard. I wanted to be one badly and had the ear, the range, the training and the musicality for it but could never get over having a poor jaw release (I blame orthodontic instruments of evil for this problem) and "performance issues" (stage fright/nerves, which made me hard to watch and my vocal cords tighten up - that's all on me).

Being a fabulous 10 year old singer is like being a fabulous 10 year old soccer player - fun while it lasts and a very worthwhile activity, but geez, let them be kids before they're touted as "the next big thing." And the eye needs to be on what's best long term rather than what's best now.

The rant wasn't necessarily directed at you, Double J, and HC probably has more insight on this since she made a very successful transition into the world of adult classical music. Hell, to some extent it's a rant against the entire philosophy of child prodigies. We're fascinated with little kids doing adult things, which almost always sets those kids up for unreasonable expectations in the long run, and the training can even set them up for failure because it's geared to the wrong endpoint.

 

Nicely said, Smash. I would never have considered any of that.

And I'm sure you're an absolutely wonderful singer.....you offer a great perspective on that too.

 

Two words ... Charlotte Church. I agree with what Smash said above - that technique will work for a while and then she's gonna end up with a wobble you can drive a Volkswagen through. She has lovely ability - innate musicality, good pitch - but I worry that the voice won't last into adulthood.

 

She's from Pittsburgh and her story is getting lots of local media attention.

 

Don't understand. Is Church supposed to be a failure? Seems to me she's had a nice career, racked up millions and plenty of awards, took time off to have a kid and has another album (her sixth, according to her website) coming out later this year. What am I missing?

 

I don't follow it much, but I think Charlotte had some personal issues and abandoned classical singing for a pop career.

 

NoOne is right. Church doesn't sing classical music and hasn't since she was about 18 or 19. She's a pop singer now, though to be fair to her, she has a lot more technique than your average auto-tuned diva. My guess is she never got the right training and/or never developed the right technique to deal with the rigors of adult classical music.

I can't speak to her personal issues, though.

And Double J - I can impress people by busting out the BigOperaVoice, but I'm well out of practice at this point and know my own shortcomings as a serious classical singer far too well. Heh, in hockey terms, I'm like a rusty A league skater at this point who topped out in the UHL in my prime. It's impressive, but when you get educated in the nuances of classical music, my shortcomings are glaringly obvious. But hey, we all can't make the NHL.

 

Sure, she made money but her voice had a HUGE wobble by her late teens. If she's doing fine as a pop singer, more power to her but singing classical music and creating an adult song as a child is like asking a child to lift olympic caliber weights - their bodies just aren't equipped for it.