Child sensation Jackie Evancho to sing

MORRISTOWN — Platinum-selling, 14-year-old vocal sensation Jackie Evancho performs music from her new release "Awakening" and more at Mayo Performing Arts Center, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2014 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $59 to $129.

Jackie Evancho's first performance on NBC's variety show "America's Got Talent" left audiences and judges astonished that such a perfect, beautiful, soprano voice could come from a 10 year-old girl. During her next appearance in the competition, judges asked Jackie to improvise a tune which she performed flawlessly. It wasn't just her musical gift and her age that floored the "America's Got Talent" audience, but Jackie's presence, poise and charm that truly made them take notice. One of the show's judges, Piers Morgan, explained, "You've got the whole package."

The young soprano from Pittsburgh with the stunning voice won runner-up and launched her soon-to-be legendary career, signing with Columbia Records shortly thereafter.

"She is a prodigy; they break the rules by definition," wrote music critic Andrew Duckenbrod in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after seeing a then-11 year old perform to a sold-out crowd in her hometown in October 2011. "[Her] voice mesmerizes. She has become one of the performers who has been defining the "crossover classic" category of singers — those who are equally comfortable with Puccini or pop."

In a little over two years, Jackie's voice has won her millions of fans and her recordings have dominated the music and DVD charts. Now 14, Jackie has garnered the support of legendary music producers like David Foster and filmmakers such as Robert Redford. Billboard Magazine named Jackie to their list of music movers-and-shakers under the age of 21 in 2011 and again in 2012 because the soprano's "spellbinding, operatic vocals possess a power and poignancy that often moves listeners multiple times her age to tears."

Without foregoing the classical-crossover compositions for which Evancho has become famous, she also extends her stylistic reach with contemporary material on songs such as the haunting folk song "The Rains of Castamere" from HBO's hit series Game of Thrones. She also takes a bigger step forward on her version of U2's "With or Without You." Moreover, Evancho sings several original songs including the anthem "Take Me There" and "Open Fields of Grace."

"Some of these songs are more on the pop side, and have a little faster beat than the songs I usually sing — but it was really fun," she says.

She also tackles the ethereal ballad "Memories" by the Dutch band, Within Temptation, in addition to the popular classic "Think of Me" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera. "That's how it started for me," says Evancho. "When I first saw the Phantom movie I was inspired by the way the actors sang and really wanted to try to sing like that too. Their passion must have got to me."

Awakening's classical standards include Caccini/Vavilov's "Ave Maria" and Rachmaninoff's "Vocalise." "I'd never sung Rachmaninoff's 'Vocalise' before," says Evancho. "It was fun for me because there aren't any words to learn, so I could focus on the beauty of the music."

Distinguishing Awakening from her previous albums, Evancho relays that there were "no limits" thematically or otherwise on the songs that she selected. "Of course there are always going to be some classical pieces, but I wanted to reinvent the pop songs and make them my own," she says. "The only thing that mattered was that the song spoke to me."

The Mayo Performing Arts Center is located at 100 South St. in Morristown. For tickets or more information contact the box office at 973-539-8008 or www.mayoarts.org.