Hi! I am not here to bash you like the rest of the commenters even though I don't necessarily agree with you. I agree with you in some aspect: The worshipping of the child talents can sometimes get in the way of them developing into more mature, even better singers. Sometimes the youth is the "attraction" of them. But there are also REAL talents out there, children who move your heart with their voice alone, who you know you can hear in 30 years and they'll be just as good. For me, right now, Angelina Jordan is one of those rare talents. She has a presence on stage that most adult singers lack. Her voice is truly amazing. And she sings jazz! It's great. I am not a musician, so it is very much possible she could make improvements. But that doesn't take away from the fact that the hairs on my body stand up when she sings, she moves something in me. She is an old soul in an 8-year old body. One of the sentences I DID react to in your piece was when you used the sentence about children mimicking "the emotions and actions of adults". I think is an extreme underestimation of children. Children are in general seen as either 1) some sort of helpless creatures who must be protected from the real world or 2) incomplete adults. Children have thoughts and emotions that are just as complex and "real" as the one adults have. Children are often more emotional, their emotions sometimes even seem more profound. They might express them differently, but never think that a child cannot feel the same way an adult can. Love, sorrow, sadness, fear, rejection - children can feel all those things. You might argue that they are too young to know the "true meaning" of those words, but nothing is truer to a person than their own experience. If your friend doesn't want to play with you in the schoolyard or doesn't want you to come to their birthday, the rejection can wound so sincerely that you think your heart will burst. Adults do the same with teenagers, tell them that their feelings aren't as real and important because they worry about "small" things. To most people, life is a string of small things with some big things sticking out in it. I am tired of people thinking children and youths are less capable of feeling than adults. I remember what it was like to be a child, the deep love you feel for friends and parents but you don't really know how to say it except for hugging and giving them drawings. I think it's important for all of us to remember that children are not just adults in the making, they are already individuals!

All I can say is that at one time I would have agreed much with Page and Lebrecht, and still do to some degree. But the singing of Jackie Evancho is beyond anything fitting of such rantings. Sure, she might lack the technical performance of a "trained" operatic singer; but I don't know how anyone could really care about that once they've hear her sing. I am truly sorry for those that cannot perceive in their ears the beauty of her voice.

So Norman, quoting your 'article', "My colleague Tim Page was forced into virtual hiding after writing this cool-headed assessment of Jackie Evancho...", you believe his comments are cool-headed assessments. And that, "Tim's observations are shrewd, his predictions faultless.", so you support his comment that Jackie Evancho "Right now she reminds me a lot more of JonBenet Ramsey than she does of Maria Callas.", interesting. And since you felt the need to make the snide remark about Shirley Temple became US ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia,(she served the United States as an Ambassador under Four Presidents) I guess you consider that service beneath you, it's no wonder your 'article' does not make any mention of all the good works Jackie has done in the four years since she was on America's Got Talent. I am sure you think none of her deeds match the value of your self-serving blogs and 'article'. What a small, small, person you are.

You post on your own blog a recent picture of Jackie Evancho, and follow it with: "So why are the public being asked to believe in a never-ending myth of angelic infancy?" Yet here you do the same citing her 2010 America's Got Talent appearance at age 10, and post a picture from a 2011 appearance. 'Seems you're doing the same in a thinly-veiled attempt to shore up your own ice floe-based missive. And you are among a diminishing, noisy minority of "experts" who continue to dismiss and demean the talent and performance skills of Ms. Evancho. The continued caterwauling about imitation and lack of originality are so much bunk! NO ONE in the music industry sounds like her, and very few can match her emotional connection to the music she performs, or the audience she stands in front of. This continued tirade after her having the temerity to dip her toe into opera's sacred mud-puddle by singing a total of THREE opera arias (one for only a short time), and basing critique after critique on a pedagogy that requires its adherents to perform as caricatures belting face-to-face conversations to the back row has gone beyond ridiculous to the sublime - a true masterpiece at passing wind. I expected better of you. 'Sorry to disappoint you, but nothing in Tim Page's essay regarding Ms. Evancho has come to pass. His use of Jon Benet Ramsey in a comparison was disturbing enough on its own. Every one of his contentions, cautions, and impressions of her "anxiety", "limited range", "reaching and scooping for high and low notes" in his meandering monograph has been disproven time and again by simple observation. Yet you defend your "colleague" as being "cool headed", and present that what he wrote was the beginning and end of the subject. Ms. Evancho has been INVITED to perform in more prestigious venues in four short years than many stars do during lengthy careers. She is so bad a what she does that PBS has planned a third Great Performances concert to coincide with the Sept. 30th release of her third full studio album (and sixth total). She performed in Cirque du Soleil founder Gil Laliberté's charity gala "One Night for ONE DROP2013" as the sole live vocal performer in not one, but two acts. Cirque du Soleil and "mediocrity" are mutually exclusive terms. She has performed for the Japanese Royal Family, at the Hiroshima Peace Arch concert, and her second concert at Bunkamura Orchard Hall with the Tokyo Philharmonic. She was invited to perform in St. Petersburg, Russia at "Bouquet of Opera" in front of 100,000 in Palace Square with an at-first publicly doubtful and dismissive Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Sumi-Jo (both of whom she quickly won-over). She shared the stage in Taiwan with José Carreras in a rain-dampened outdoor concert in front of 30,000. She has performed in over 70 of her own concerts (with full orchestra), and twice co-billed with Tony Bennett (as well as being on the "bonus" track version of his DuetsII album). Robert Redford invited her to audition, and subsequently cast her as his character's daughter in "The Company You Keep" after seeing her on television in his location hotel room performing Puccini on her first PBS Great Performances "Dream With Me - In Concert". The list of her performances on television, and at public charity and private functions is too long to list her. Outside of music, she's spokesperson for the Humane Society of the U.S. She's modeled for GUESS Kids®, and Justice® clothing lines. Currently she can be heard providing vocals for "La Vie En Rose" on trumpeter Jumaane Smith's album "I Only Have Eyes For You". In spite of all of the above, to you and few others she is still just a pretender to be ridiculed. For that you, Tim Page, and cabbagejuice (one of your blog's most prolific Evancho detractors) are hereby admitted to the "Order of the Black Knight", the one who valiantly defended his bridge despite not having a leg to stand on, nor arms with which to gesture. Only a shrill voice remains. Jackie has already crossed the bridge, and is out of earshot. And she's not looking back.

Mr. Lebrecht and all this time I thought you were an open minded music lover, who could acknowledge the value and beauty of music, even that outside the constraints of the gerne you favor. Now you prove yourself to be the same closed minded fool your buddy Tim is. I knew you were smug, self-righteous, and egotistical, as Timmac48 has pointed out, but I did not believe you to be the closed minded fool this article shows you to be. You demean Jackie's exceptional musical talents, and make no mention of all the good she has done for millions of people in the four years since America's Got Talent. The list is far too long for me to even touch on here but anyone fair minded person can find some of her charity events listed on her Wikipedia page. What value to others does your self-serving article bring.

Tim's review was a joke. He knew it when he wrote it. That is why he went into hiding. Nothing he predicted that you describe as "faultless" has came true and judging by Jackie's success in the 4 yrs since he wrote it most likely won't. Reaching hard for high notes? that she absolutely nailed with pitch-perfect precision. Just what the hell was he watching and listening to before he wrote his hit piece? It sure as hell was not the same performance I or all the other critics were witness to. Perhaps he went into hiding because noone could take him seriously anymore. That is more likely the truth of the matter.

What's the matter, nobody paying any attention to you, so you decided to attack children. Jackie Evancho has brought more smiles & contentment to the world (let alone interest in Classical music) than a smug, self-righteous, egotistic so called music commentator, such as yourself, could ever imagine.