Jackie Evancho: the voice
I don’t ordinarily watch “America’s Got Talent.” But I’ve heard of the 10-year-old singing phenom on the show, Jackie Evancho.
She’s a tiny girl who’s not hit puberty yet, with a voice both beautiful and surpassingly strange. What would be lovely, but not all that remarkable, coming out of an adult, is freakish emanating from a child. If there was a disconnect listening to Susan Boyle because her powerful and self-assured singing voice contrasted oddly with her awkward social personality, at least it was a grownup voice emerging from a grownup body. With Evancho, it’s not. Eerily, a grownup voice is emanating from a child (and no, she’s not lip-synching):
What interests me most is the question: how does she do it? This is the only article I’ve found so far that goes into the physiology and technique behind what’s happening:
The difference between Evancho and fellow Pittsburgher Christina Aguilera is how they produce their sound. A pop voice is “like revving a motorcycle,” says Anne Tomlinson, music director of the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus. “The sound is produced right on the larynx. In bel canto, which is actually the technique opera singers use, the breath is used to support the voice like water supports a boat.”…
“[The voice] needs to be able to function as it is and at the stage of development it’s at,” says Mike McCarthy. As music director at the National Cathedral in Washington, one of McCarthy’s main responsibilities is training the child sopranos to sing in the traditional Anglican men and boys choir. “There is a question of the development of the voice in its more natural form, and by natural I don’t mean like an innocent, sort of treble white ”” I just mean as it matures, it doesn’t try to sound too old, doesn’t try to imitate the sound of an older singer.”…
Carol Tingle is a Los Angeles-area voice teacher who has been instructing private students since 1966. “Technically what’s she’s doing is lowering her larynx to get that opera sound. Singers are incredible imitators of sound. It wouldn’t surprise me if she hasn’t listened to many opera singers, so what she’d be able to do is adjust the larynx and imitate the sound she is hearing either recording or by her coach.”
All children imitate their heroes, whether it’s basketball or singing. A good teacher will make sure pupils channel that enthusiasm into finding their own style. In Evancho’s case, her teacher has an additional challenge: safeguarding that voice.
Puberty may pose a challenge to Evancho as well, as it often does to child singers. Will it change her voice for the worse, or the better? She probably has at least a few years ahead of her, though, to earn the big bucks before it happens. She seems to be a nice, unspoiled kid; let’s hope success is kind to both her psyche and her voice. It will almost undoubtedly be kind to her pocketbook.
Jeez. First again. You’d think, being semi-retired, I’d still be in bed.
Evancho seems to be singing from her interest, not her principle, as one opera singer said.
Read a reference to various guys hanging around the fringes of opera but no more, because they tried one or another particular role too soon for their voices.
Kathleen Jenkins (“forces’ sweetheart”) can be found on Youtube both speaking and singing. Clearly, she has found the bel canto voice when she sings, sounding like a normal young woman when she speaks. Fabulous as her voice is, strong as it is, she said she won’t be ready for Carmen for at least three years.
Don’t know opera, or even like it, but the idea that your voice has to be trained as if you were a decathlete is interesting.
Here’s hoping Evancho doesn’t ruin hers. It’s said that Charlotte Church damaged her voice by singing too hard. See her on Youtube (Men of Harlech, esp.)
Something’s weird here. Like a photorealistic painting too perfect to really admire.
Lets hope that the people who are aiding her have her best interests as a person and not just as a singer. I had a good friend who had studied trumpet from one of the finest brass teachers on the west coast from the time he was old enough to stand and hold the instrument.
When he played it was effortless and looked as if it was part of him. After a few years I heard that he had quit playing. He had a road grader run over his trumpet and made a wall plaque out of it.
I am not sure the reasons for this, but I surmise, as in other cases, that he never really had a chance to become a child and face all of the challenges we all contend. And as we all do who seek to be the best we can be we come up against the wall. Then we either work to get pass the wall or like in this case maybe, we walk away. We have to face those “walls” in order to succeed.
Talent and a propensity toward some endeavor is only about 10 percent of becoming great. The rest is hard work and a willingness to strive and succeed no matter the challenges. A voice is an instrument that requires training as in any other endeavor.
I just hope that they guide her in a growing appreciation for the talent she has and not push her to the point of hating it.
But there is no such thing as talent, skill, or differences based from genetics… it must be the environment, right?
Reminds me of Bianca Ryan’s performance on the same show in 2006. Her style was pop rather than opera, but it was the same experience: an adult woman’s voice coming out of a little girl’s body.
Not to be the party pooper here, but to me it was kind of breathy and off key. She definitely sounds like she is imitating an opera singer. To me it sounds like she is forcing the wavering so that she will sound more opera. It sounds like the tremolo is coming from her throat and not from her diaphragm, due to the kind of choked-off sound.
If you listen to the lower notes of the song, you can really hear it better, my voice teacher used to call that “burping” the low notes. She is opening her throat too wide to force more volume.
Additionally, her intake breaths are loud which also shows that she is using too much throat and not enough diaphragm.
I would say she either needs a better teacher or she needs to listen better during lessons, or both.
Dennis:
Great comment. Child prodigies are often pushed too hard by their parents or other adults. In order to rise to the top in any field, you have to really want it more than anything. Only then will you be willing to put in the time and hard work that is necessary. A talented child is often too young to know what they really want to do, and is made to work in order to satisfy adult authority figures.
rickl.
Seen that before.
There was a kid singing at a wedding a few years ago. I was not where I could see her. The first hymn had some little-girl overtones and the second was quite mature.
I found she was seven and took an opportunity to ask her mother about…things.
Singing. Great hobby, lousy way to make a living, that sort of thing.
“She knows where her blessing comes from. She’ll use it as she decides.” I was relieved to hear it.
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On the age-incongruity thing — remember Brooke Shields as a young girl? A child with a woman’s face.
Apparently it can happen with the voice, too.
This discussion interests me very much because as a child, I was a boy soprano with a rather unusual voice. I didn’t know anything about opera or operatic voices, I was more interested in broadway show tunes and that sort of thing, but in those days, I had no technical knowledge whatsoever, no great musical skill, but when I sang, it came very easily. Fast forward a few years, and my voice changed, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I had such difficulty trying to figure out how to sing with my different voice that I gave it up entirely.
It wasn’t until years later that I took some lessons and started to learn some things about how to use it, but even then–in my mid-to-late-20s–I wasn’t quite prepared to know how to use what my voice teacher was trying to teach me. I began to appreciate it a few years after I stopped those lessons, but the next time I tried taking lessons, the voice teacher wasn’t as good and it was a frustrating experience.
Now while women’s voices don’t undergo the same dramatic transformation men’s voices do, the changes are still there, and there is definitely a need to really learn how to use the instrument properly as one matures. While a piano or violin prodigy may turn into a virtuoso at a young age and continue to improve as he or she ages (think Joshua Bell), it’s definitely a completely different situation where singing is concerned. The example of Charlotte Church cited above is instructive.
I just saw this linked at Ace of Spades, and it kind of fits here: a classical voice teacher evaluates the vocal technique of five male heavy metal singers.
She didn’t know who they were, and they were played for her anonymously. Her comments are fascinating. I had no idea there was so much involved with singing professionally.
http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2010/07/ask-a-real-musician-5-classic-male-metal-singers/
/Shower singer over and out!
Charlotte Church may or may not have pushed her voice. But she apparently tried to have a rock and roll and alcohol lifestyle on an opera voice. That’s a killer. (That’s also why opera singers traditionally indulged in other stuff, like food and the opposite sex.)