A Bright Spot amidst the gloom
-->
I have always had varied and eclectic musical taste. Baroque, Classical, Modern, Dixieland jazz, Be-Bop,
rock, 50’s doo-wop, Heavy Metal, Euro-dance, Techno, New Wave, World Beat… Note that this is not the same as being indiscriminate - far from it! Within each category, I am quite particular. For example, I love Jefferson Airplane, and have no use for the Grateful Dead. The difference is virtuosity: the
Airplane were really good with their instruments and they had some great
voices, led of course by Grace Slick. The Dead, not so much, no matter
how charming you might find their sloppy, self-indulgent jams (if you want to
hear a band that can jam, try the Allman Bros.) I sometimes wondered if they even knew how to tune their instruments.
Some genres get a “no opinion” because I simply haven’t been
interested enough to dig into them. One
such is “vocalists”. Most of them strike me as soulless technicians
obsessed with being the center of attention (yes, that means Streisand and
Sinatra, first and foremost), or belters with lots of heart but middling voices (most rock and soul singers when they are not being drowned out by their bands). Celine Dion and Whitney Houston are/were
megastars with huge followings, but in all honesty, Dion’s voice is ordinary,
and both she and Houston wasted themselves on a lot of atrociously bad
material. Popular, yes, but so is Yanni, who puts out the musical equivalent of Pop Tarts.
Popular singers increasingly get by on staging, recording tricks (Autotune has become ubiquitous, the great leveler that makes talent almost unnecessary) or vulgarity. It is the rare singer who
can transport the listener purely by the sound of her voice. I can think of three from the pop realm: Ella Fitzgerald, Roy Orbison and Linda
Ronstadt. They were vastly different
from each other, but had flawless instruments.
They also did great material (Orbison had the added distinction that he wrote
almost all of his own stuff). They
packed an emotional punch without having to force it. Fitzgerald and Ronstadt covered a vast
range of material, almost never sounding an off note. There have been others with the emotional
gut-punch effect, but they did it despite, or perhaps because of,
unconventional, even bad voices: Billie
Holliday, Edith Piaf, Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin come to mind. I love all of them, but not because of the sheer beauty of their voices.
Then, of course, there is opera. It takes focus and dedication to really “know”
opera, so I plead relative ignorance. While
I love the great Puccini arias, and I find the mythology behind the Ring fascinating,
I have sat through very few full length performances. Still, there is no denying the power and
beauty of voices like Placido Domingo, Leontyne Price, and Anna Netrebko. No “pop” or “R&B” singer has their
quality (just listen to Aretha Franklin trying to sing opera…then again, don’t,
because you can’t un-hear it). Crossover
singers like Brightman and Bocelli are closer, but still not in the same
league. Then again, they don't claim to
be opera singers.
I never really thought systematically about any of the above--it was just part of the background, the context for my taste in music. And so, when I stumbled across Jackie Evancho, I was completely unprepared. My reaction almost scared me--a tightening in my stomach, a desire to weep, an out-of-body sensation, a feeling of astonishment. I dug around and found the videos of her performances at the ages of 8 and 9, and, to quote a professional singer who had performed with her, I was “gobsmacked”. The videos of her as a 10 or 11 year-old remain jaw-dropping even after many viewings. I went on a month-long binge, and I can still listen to her for hours and feel the same sense of astonishment. Shortly after her 11th birthday, as a guest of Britain's Got Talent, she sang Nessun Dorma, an aria that some have said women should not even be allowed to sing (few have ever tried). She completely owned it. Watching that video alone is an almost life-changing experience:
I never really thought systematically about any of the above--it was just part of the background, the context for my taste in music. And so, when I stumbled across Jackie Evancho, I was completely unprepared. My reaction almost scared me--a tightening in my stomach, a desire to weep, an out-of-body sensation, a feeling of astonishment. I dug around and found the videos of her performances at the ages of 8 and 9, and, to quote a professional singer who had performed with her, I was “gobsmacked”. The videos of her as a 10 or 11 year-old remain jaw-dropping even after many viewings. I went on a month-long binge, and I can still listen to her for hours and feel the same sense of astonishment. Shortly after her 11th birthday, as a guest of Britain's Got Talent, she sang Nessun Dorma, an aria that some have said women should not even be allowed to sing (few have ever tried). She completely owned it. Watching that video alone is an almost life-changing experience:
When I first came across some of her fan reviews, they
sounded unhinged. There was talk of her
literally being an angel sent by God, or, echoing a comment from one of the
judges of America’s Got Talent, that she must be an alien. Admittedly, most of her fans use such terms
metaphorically, but the message is real:
She is other-worldly. She induces
a kind of ecstatic trance, or involuntary weeping, in many of the people in her
audiences. Watch her concert videos, and
you will see grown men and Grammy award-winning stars wiping tears from their
faces as they listen to her. Humans
invent supernatural explanations for things that they can’t explain any other
way, so it is with Evancho.
Scientists are studying her to try to understand how she
achieves her tone. How does one describe
it? First, she is often described as
“bell-like”, meaning that she hits her notes precisely, with purity and
clarity, and no false overtones or distortion. (Note: distortion is not bad per se—it is
what gives some famous voices their unique character. Evancho’s uniqueness is the astonishing
purity of her voice.) It also means
there are no “holes” in her sound. If
you listen to her next to Streisand, with whom she released a duet, it is Streisand’s
voice that sounds damaged, as though something important is missing.
A sound engineer’s explanation is of little use to non-geeks,
so I use the analogy of a rainbow.
Evancho’s voice is like a full rainbow, the colors bright and in perfect
balance. Almost every other voice I have
heard is like the rainbow with some of the colors missing, or viewed through a
smudged or cracked window. Among female
pop vocalists, the only comparable voice I can think of is Linda Ronstadt at
her peak, and hers is still a distinctly "pop" voice. A better comparison is with the
great operatic sopranos Netrebko and Barbara Bonney. Even Maria Callas sounds out of balance, with
too much yellow and orange, and not enough blue and purple, though that may
also be an artifact of older recording technology. And Callas (whose greatness lay in her emotional presentation) did not hit all her notes spot on. Evancho's errors are so rare that some of her fans can list them (from hundreds of hours of video replayed over and over).
Second, Evancho has almost the power of an operatically
trained singer, without the “trumpet-blast” sound typical of opera. She sings with a microphone, so any proper
comparison is with singers also using mics. As it happens, Domingo, Pavarotti and Carreras used
mics in their crossover concerts. So do Netrebko, Sumi Jo, Fleming, Sissel,
Villazon, Hvorostovsky and many others, as well as Bocelli and Brightman, so there are plenty of benchmarks. Evancho has performed with many of these
people --some the world’s biggest stars have lined up to sing with her. At the
age of 10, she already belonged on the stage with them, not as a curiosity, but
on a completely serious footing. The
common reaction people have to her, even now that she is 16, is that a voice
this big can’t possibly come from someone so petite. It creates a kind of cognitive disconnect
that must contribute to the effect she has on her audiences.
There is yet another aspect of Evancho that sets her
apart. Back to our earlier image: We usually see a rainbow when the sun shines through the mist after a rainstorm. The brighter the sun, the brighter the rainbow. Now, imagine seeing a rainbow after nightfall,
with no sun to illuminate it, yet somehow shining brightly in the darkness. Evancho’s voice is like that: luminous and penetrating, yet surrounded by
something dark and melancholy. It seems
to come from nowhere, and carries a hint of an echo. This may owe itself in part to what vocal
trainers call “cover”, which can be taught as a matter of technique, but in her
case seems in-born. Whatever the
explanation, I suspect that it is this combination of radiance and darkness that
reduces her audiences to tears. Ronstadt
had a bit of that quality as well. The
only male singer I can think of that had it was Orbison, which was why he could
stand motionless and sing for two hours and still have audiences weeping and
calling for ten encores.
This darkness is also an odd juxtaposition with Evancho’s
physical appearance, which is golden and innocent, almost angelic. When she first appeared on the scene, as a
10-year old on a global stage, happy and poised and charming, instinctively in command
of the stage and yet so unabashedly a little girl (what excited her most about
one trip to California was finding a sand dollar on the beach), it must have
shocked people. I missed it when it originally happened, and it shocks me now
when I watch the video record.
Evancho’s voice is maturing and deepening, yet her high
notes remain pure and transcendent. To
get a sense of her progression, listen to her rendition of Bridge Over Troubled
Water, one of the few since the original by Simon and Garfunkel
that does not sound ridiculous (Elvis Presley’s may be the only other). Then move ahead a year and half, to her album
“Awakenings”. Many of her fans, used to
a diet of classic arias, were bracing themselves for disappointment. They need not have worried. This album is beautiful, even if some of the
song selections are ordinary. She makes
them her own in a spectacular way.
There was a lot of worry (and too much malicious hope, from
jealous or bitter people, one guesses) that Evancho would burn out, or ruin her
voice, or grow out of her talent. It was
a reasonable concern. But she hasn’t burned out, appears to love what she does,
and continues to grow. If you have watched the videos, you know she is also ethereally beautiful. It seems completely unfair, but she is so modest, humble and grateful for her gifts that it is impossible to begrudge her any of them. May she shine on for a long, long time.