Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm sure most visitors to this page came because they saw Jackie Evancho perform on America's Got Talent. That was true for me--I'd never heard of her before now. I sure have now, and I will buy this album when more are made. That said, you should realize that you won't be hearing the soulful adult voice soaring out of a ten year old child's mouth that astonished viewers on AGT. This is her voice a year earlier. Here she sounds like a gifted child--an extraordinarily gifted child with near-perfect pitch, one of the best vibratos I've ever heard in anyone regardless of age, and an exquisite musical sensibility--but a child for all that. So if you'll only be satisfied with what you heard on AGT, wait for her next album. But if, like me, you've become a diehard fan in the two minutes she sang on AGT; if you've gone to YouTube and listened to everything else she's done--then you'll want to make the small investment needed to get this historical record of where a great star of the future came from. What we really need is a DVD of her performing. Then you could see something that isn't fully brought across by just an audio track--which is the fact that she's "inside the music." Meaning that she isn't just singing--she's channelling the composer's soul from deep within the essence of the piece. I don't want to go too far with this. Evancho has the strengths and weaknesses of a happy childhood with what appear to be great parents and siblings--surrounded by love and acceptance. Compare this with, say, Christina Aguilera, another very talented singer, who first started singing in her bedroom to try to drown out the screams of her mother as her drunken father beat her mother (and then deserted them when Aguilera was still young). Aguilera at age 8 was a growly blues singer with a very adult understanding of pain and loss. What Evancho does understand, though, is soulfulness. Some call her a spinto soprano, which soprano Rosalind Plowright has described as someone with the timbre of a lower register. That is, Evancho hits really high notes effortlessly--and without having to slide up to them to find the pitch. She just nails them. Yet her vocal texture is that of a contralto--dark and rich, like a night-blooming flower. It's the difference between Placido Domingo, a tenor with the timbre of a baritone, and Pavarotti, a pure tenor. This gives Evancho the feeling of someone who isn't just a musical athlete, producing the notes perfectly but not necessarily much more than that--and delivering a feeling with the notes that makes you want to stop in your tracks and think/feel about what's really important in life. Another vote for a DVD is that if you can imagine Joe Cocker as a 10 year old girl, you'll get a feel for the curious facial and gestural mechanics of her amazing musical production. But this is part of her being inside the music. If she were an athlete I'd say she was in the zone--in a place where the world, the audience disappears, and it's just you and the art you're embodying, where you become a window between the audience and powerful artistic experiences. I should add some response to the many comments I've seen elsewhere that assume she was lip-synching either herself or someone else, or that her parents are pushing her, yada yada. I understand where such cynicism comes from. I was raised by a drunk and a deadbeat, with a family life a lot closer to that of Christina Aguilera than of the Evancho household. Being forced to grow up in a corrosive environment can easily make you cynical. But I grew to realize that my experiences were not universal, and the goodness I failed to find at home does exist in others' homes--and I'm certain that this is true of the Evanchos. I don't think they're pushing her at all. If anything, I think they're trying to make sure that someone as driven as she is is NOT pushed. And that she doesn't do a Janis Joplin to her instrument. And though I'm not a vocal coach myself, I'm pretty sure she isn't straining or overdoing it. She's just better than the rest of us. Her whole life people are going to be attracted to her because she's so extraordinarily talented, as well as beautiful, and charming. Some people just get all the goodies when the genetic dice are rolled, and she's one of them. You can either admire that or become envious. I prefer the former. You'll live longer if you go that way, BTW. Bottom line: buy this album, even though it's an earlier stage of her development. Her family isn't rich. Her dad has some kind of security camera franchise in Pittsburgh, so they're not poor either. But she needs the best vocal coaches that can be found to protect and develop her instrument properly, and supporting someone like her is something Jews call a mitzvah--a Good Thing. Do it. NOTE AS OF MARCH 26, 2010: Jackie's family withdrew this CD from the market last year, and the only copy being offered on Amazon is just that--a copy being passed off as the original. It is possible to download "Prelude to a Dream"'s tracks online if you rummage around online, and on Amazon's Jackie forum her mother gave us permission to do so. But do not under any circumstances give money to a scam artist. Meanwhile we can get Jackie's "O Holy Night" CD/DVD combination today, and her new CD is due in June. I've heard many of the songs on it from low-fi YouTube clips of songs she's performing in concerts now, and her growth even since America's Got Talent simply beggars the imagination. She is not a "child singer," as is every single other child out there today who's singing. Jackie is a singer.