I would like to see the new fresh wonderkin Andrea Motis. She is from the Barcelona Spain school of jazz and played professionally since age 14. Her main emphasis is on Carlos Jobim style romantic sambas sung in Portugese and English. She loves to sing old american standards and New Orleans blues too. In both genre she excels. This year she has done concerts in New York and Boston. She sings, plays trumpet and sometimes sax - she can bend notes. She assembles her own quartets from the best jazz players in the USA and around the world. See her on YouTube.com. Andrea has published many CDs and VCRs and, now at age 24, is worth $6,000,000 (in case you are looking for a new wife). Now back to Jackie with the comments mostly plagerized from a 2016 critique in the TimesUnion of Troy NewYork by Steve Barnes.
"The young singer Jackie Evancho is in an awkward and critical period of growth as an artist.
Now 18, she's no longer the angelic blonde who wowed judges and won over TV audiences as a child in 2010. And as she showed during a concert to a half-full house on Saturday night" at the Genesee Theatre, "she's not yet a fully formed adult vocalist".
"Evancho doesn't seem to know who she wants to be as a singer. As a result she doesn't offer distinctive, unique-to-her interpretations of the songs she chooses to sing — though they are indeed gorgeously sung — nor does her mixed bag of current material reflect a vision of how she'll mature. At the moment, putting Puccini's "O Mio Babbino Caro" and "Nessun Dorma" on the same program with Somewhere Over the Rainbow and the Broadway standard "The Impossible Dream" makes for a puzzling and unconvincing juxtaposition."
Saturday, her rendition of O Mi Babbino Caro was sloppy and rushed. In general, when she was 10 years old, she sang with total emotion and abandon, using her hands and arms to direct her singing and even crying at the beauty of the music and her voice. As a teen, she is more reserved and less interesting and less interested. I hope she grows out of her teen shyness.
"Right now, Evancho has her voice, an instrument of pristine beauty. It peals with the purity of bells and lofts tones that shimmer with celestial iridescence. By an abstract, clinical scale, they are exquisite notes. But beautiful notes and phrases alone are insufficient for a successfully realized song. Lacking an apparent interpretive style or emotional connection to the material — she's much more believable when talking about what a song means to her than when she sings it — Evancho becomes a machine for beautiful notes, and after a while during a concert, that's not enough."
"On Saturday, over a little more than two hours on a stage set with poinsettias, roses and faux candles, Evancho performed more than 20 numbers. Five of her biggest hits, alas, were truncated into a one-verse-and-chorus medley, including "Time to Say Goodbye," "Think of Me," "Somewhere" and "The Prayer." The audience was not given a chance to saver each song and applaud if they liked it.
"Such medleys cheapen the individual songs."
She also sang How Great Thou Art which was her best performance of the evening. "Though marred by the weak diction and enunciation that affected most of the evening, the hymn soared on reverent joy, its polished notes at last amplified by true emotional connection."
"Evancho was ably supported by music director Peter Kiesewalter, who accompanied her on grand piano and keyboards, with supplemental recorded instrumental support. (In a kind but unnecessary indulgence, Evancho took a break midway during both sets to allow Kiesewalter to perform his arrangements of overtures and entr'actes from "The Marriage of Figaro " and "Carmen.")"
The foregoing to the contrary notwithstanding, the evening was wonderful, the theatre beautiful and the staff friendly and accommodating.
