Ten-year-old Jackie Evancho was a big hit on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” last summer and more recently appeared as one act on PBS for the “Great Performances” March pledge special “Hitman Returns: David Foster & Friends.” Now she’s been booked to appear in her own TV special for Great Performances, airing in June.
By the time the special airs Evancho will have hit the ripe old age of 11, but she’s still 10 as WNET-TV New York’s THIRTEEN production arm shoots the concert in Sarasota, FL this month. It appears she is the youngest featured artist ever for the Great Performances series. That’s still not a record for PBS, since Connie Talbot (a “Britain’s Got Talent” discovery before anyone heard of Susan Boyle) had a Christmas special on the network at age 9.
Evancho’s four-song holiday CD released last November, “Oh Holy Night,” sold over one million copies. Her first full-length CD for the SYCO/Columbia label, “Dream with Me,” is coming out in June. Not coincidentally, the PBS special is called “Jackie Evancho: Dream with Me in Concert.”
The solo concert special will be co-hosted by 16-time Grammy-winning producer David Foster, who produced the CD and serves as musical director for the Great Performances production.
Jackie Evancho: Dream with Me in Concert is a co-production of THIRTEEN for WNET and SYCO/Columbia. For Great Performances, Mitch Owgang is producer; Bill O’Donnell is series producer; and David Horn is executive producer. Major funding for the Great Performances telecast is provided by the Starr Foundation, the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, Joseph A. Wilson, and public television viewers.
