Evancho celebrates ‘Awakening’ at Smith Center

Jackie Evancho doesn’t like to hear herself sing.

She may be the only one, though.

In the four years since her breakthrough on “America’s Got Talent” — at the advanced age of 10 — Evancho has captivated audiences, thanks to classical crossover recordings, TV specials and concerts that showcase her soaring soprano.

But things might sound a bit different when Evancho takes the Reynolds Hall stage Saturday at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts.

After all, she’s 14 now — and her voice shows it, revealing a richness that signals her approaching, inevitable maturity.

Evancho’s well aware of the changes in her vocal instrument — but only when she listens to her own recordings.

And “that’s rare,” she admits during a recent telephone interview from her hometown, Pittsburgh. “I hate listening to myself.”

That’s because “I always hear what’s wrong,” Evancho explains. “I’m a very big perfectionist.”

No wonder she prefers live performances.

“That’s why I do what I do,” Evancho says of her concerts. “I love singing a lot and it’s very fun for me to do.”

Especially when she hears that “I make people happy” with her music.

Saturday’s concert will feature multiple highlights from her most recent recording, “Awakening” — including “Think of Me” from “The Phantom of the Opera.”

Seeing the 2004 movie version of “Phantom” at age 7 inspired Evancho to start singing — for other people.

“I always did enjoy singing,” she says. But “when I was little, my voice would sound really bad.”

That is, until “I got my tonsils removed,” she says. (It was when she was 5 or 6.) After that, Evancho says her voice changed — for the better.

She never really knew about the musical gifts that eventually made her famous, Evancho says. “I first realized when people started telling me.”

Evancho auditioned twice in person for “America’s Got Talent,” but producers turned her down. It wasn’t until her parents submitted a YouTube video featuring her rendition of “Panis Angelicus” that she wound up on the show, with voters sending her directly to the fifth-season quarterfinals.

Her competition continued with renditions of “O Mio Babbino Caro,” “Time to Say Goodbye,” “Pie Jesu” and “Ave Maria.” In the 2010 finale, Evancho joined classical crossover diva Sarah Brightman for a “Time to Say Goodbye” duet.

She finished second — to Las Vegas-based blues rocker Michael Grimm — in the competition for the “America’s Got Talent” crown.

But that didn’t exactly interfere with her march to the top of the charts.

Thanks to a four-song holiday EP, “O Holy Night,” Evancho became the best-selling debut artist of 2010, the youngest top-10 debut artist in U.S. history and the youngest solo artist to achieve platinum-level sales.

In 2011, noted producer David Foster oversaw her first full-length album, “Dream With Me,” which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart. A DVD version of her PBS “Great Performances” special “Dream With Me in Concert” topped Billboard’s music video chart.

Her “Heavenly Christmas” album debuted atop the Billboard Classical chart, which is where Evancho’s fourth album, “Songs From the Silver Screen,” also landed after its October 2012 release.

But when “Awakening” arrived last fall, Evancho showed she had a few surprises in store for her loyal listeners.

Oh, the classical selections (Ravel’s “Vocalise,” the art song “Dormi Jesu” and Russian composer Vladimir Vavilov’s “Ave Maria”) were all there, along with such movie and TV transfers as “The Rains of Castamere” (from HBO’s “Game of Thrones”) and Ennio Morricone’s “Your Love” (originally heard in Sergio Leone’s 1968 classic “One Upon a Time in the West”).

Yet some Evancho fans were undoubtedly surprised to hear her wrap her lush voice around U2’s “With or Without You.”

It’s “an experiment,” she admits, noting that “I usually sing opera arias that are hundreds of years old, and classical crossover pieces.”

But “I have so much fun” singing the U2 anthem, she says. “It’s such an upbeat song.”

Evancho hopes to record more rock songs, but “I usually listen to soundtracks from movies,” she says.

Acting remains another goal — although she’s already appeared in everything from “High School Musical” and “A Christmas Carol” (onstage in her native Pittsburgh) to TV’s “The Wizards of Waverly Place.”

And no less a Hollywood legend than actor-director Robert Redford tapped her to play his character’s daughter in his 2012 thriller “The Company You Keep.”

While casting, Redford was watching TV in his hotel room, “sitting there all depressed, surfing and drinking, and suddenly I’m skipping across the channels and this golden-haired, angelic face is pouring out, singing,” Redford said of Evancho before the movie’s Toronto International Film Festival premiere.

“I love acting,” Evancho says now, “but I’ve got to get more experience.”

She also practices from time to time, to keep her voice in shape, but “I do have time to have fun,” Evancho points out — especially when she’s not on the road performing.

That’s when she gets to return to school — she’s in ninth grade — and spend time with her friends.

“They know, when I’m home, I just want to be a normal kid,” she says.

Good luck with that one, Jackie.

Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.