Faryl Smith

[postscript]

Thanks, Dave for that reference to Faryl. I certainly like to keep up with the girl.

Peter S.

[Richard]

Hello everybody!

If you missed yesterday's Songs of Praise, you can watch it at any time until next Sunday HERE (UK only). Faryl sings Brahms' Lullaby 18 minutes into the programme.

I'm fairly certain the location is Southwark Cathedral in London.

Richard

[postscript]

Thank you Richard.

I had forgotten it, so am glad to have been prompted. I'm playing it now.

Peter S.

[Elliot Kane]

Funny. And cool. Thanks, Dave

[martindn]

Just watched it! Beautiful. Thanks for the link Dave. You know, I had a gut feeling last Sunday that I ought to watch SOP, but was busy painting, so I didn't.. Now I know why.

Martin

[Dave]

Hi Martin,

If you meant the link to SoP, it was posted by Richard. I was (and still am) too busy to remember to watch it!

Cheers, Dave

[postscript]

Hi Everyone.

This is a long post but as I make comparsions and comments regarding Hayley’s ‘concerts in churches experience’ and the post overall relates to such concerts I believe it is valid not to précis it further.

Following a sequence of events, during which I have been playing some music from my library, as generally my work requires concentration without musical distraction, I have just turned to Faryl Smith’s debut CD. I met her at York so this provides me with the incentive to catch up on that delayed post. I predict we have another Hayley. What is amazing, especially with the reminder of Keith’s report on his first experience of Hayley, is that in his writings, a life time away now it seems, we have repeated his emotions unawares, in all our first reports on Hayley, saying how we have simply been blown away by her.

Seeing videos of her again at 15/16, it is very easy to see what Hayley herself has said, that observing Faryl is like seeing her younger self. Could we really have another trip into fantasy land yet still keeping our feet vaguely in touch with reality? I think that potential is there. Simon Cowell observed Faryl was one in a million. I think such thoughts derive from the fact that her voice is extraordinarily mature for so young a girl. Piers Morgan said that he closed his eyes and heard a girl twice her age singing. Mentally I do the same every time I hear her. Like Hayley, her voice records no better than she delivers live. There may be technical artifice which is inevitable but there is no falseness. Recorded or live, it is the same voice and as with Hayley, live is so much better.

This is a strong voice. It is unique in a different way to Hayley’s. Faryl’s voice is within the ‘normally perceived range of expectation’, save for that extraordinary maturity. It is a voice of beauteous roundness, mellow, mellifluous, the extraordinary warmness of a mother. Her sound is like a well scented rose (Hayley Westenra?!) as its buds unfold and open their petals, gently pervading the warmth of its scent. Yes, at times her youth shows, you know where she is going but isn’t there yet. That is no reflection on her performance, simply a statement of what is yet to come. This is a voice that is going to be exciting to follow in our listening, as we have listened and followed Hayley in her developing maturity.

Fortunately, in my chat with her mother, I learned they are all aware of the care with which that voice must be treated and are aware of the ‘great debate’ on how a voice should be developed vis a vis interference with its natural progression and when, if at all, one should interfere. It appears she may be in the hands of a good teacher and if so, that teacher will know how far she can help and the point at which she should pass her over to someone further up the chain in coaching. More particularly I gather they had read The World At Her Feet and found it very helpful. I urged Linda to read In Her Own Voice too.

What I love about the girl is the ease with which she slips into her natural home accent and switches out into performance English without any trace of artifice. Now, having met with her, I repeat she is another Hayley in personality. When I studied her in Watford from a distance, I can now say that all I had imagined is true. She is simply herself, a very down-to-earth, normal girl, who treats her talent with respect, as a violinist would look after her instrument but leave it outside the reception in the cloak-room. So Faryl, in chatting and ‘being about’ is just a very pleasant entertaining personality capable of a rational and down-to-earth conversation. As is usually the case with ‘child’ performers, whether amateur or professional, they naturally drift to an older style of being than their physical ages would indicate and Faryl could easily be mistaken for an older teenager, or someone in their twenties. That is not wishing to rush her life past--she has said she is happy being thirteen. That is just the way it is with performers, early maturity comes from performance experience.

I shall meet with Faryl at another charity event in Stoke in the autumn, so my main purpose on this occasion was to meet with Katherine Jenkins. One report said she never attended, another that she stayed so brief a time she almost left before she had properly arrived! While in many aspects this was a Katherine Jenkins concert, with Faryl as her apprentice, it seems ‘skivvy’ might be a more accurate description. ‘Yes’, Faryl is just starting out and ‘yes’ she has the ropes to learn of the professional world and its ‘proprieties’ and ‘yes’, Katherine’s publicity indicates she is being very good to Faryl but we need to remember that being ‘good’ to Faryl doesn’t do Katherine’s promotion any harm, as long as such patronage does not become so narrow as to close out other opportunities for Faryl.

What Faryl needs right now is flexibility and adaptability. She needs to learn the ground work in as wide a frame of experience as possible. Yes, she is just starting out and one of the things Hayley seems to have felt ‘guilty’ about is that it came to her too easily. So she embarked on a variety of roles, acting as curtain warmers to other people. Many of us were put out that she wasn’t greeted with the respect we expected for her but at least she can look back on her career and know that although her rise to stardom was meteoric she did do some hard grafting along the way.

Faryl too must do her stint of hard graft but at the same time develop her experience as widely as possible. She is still at school in a conventional way but I suspect her attendance record is beginning to get ragged as she concentrates more on specialist tuition that will be more directly relevant to her intended career. She said that she found Hayley an absolutely lovely person. If Hayley felt they hit it off well, I am sure there is much that Hayley would be happy to share with her from her experiences of going through just what Faryl must be going through at the moment--and her parents. They must be as much at sea as Jill and Gerald were at the outset. When I met Jill she already had the experience of three years of Hayley in NZ and one year in the UK as an international phenomenon, in just the way Linda and Tony (Faryl’s parents) are just starting out, learning how to cope with Faryl in the UK and in the States, without any acquired background.

Of course, my perceived failings of Katherine may be due to the organisers inviting too large an attendance at the ‘meet and greet’ or not organising well enough but if one is paying £100 for the opportunity to meet and greet both artists then one expects to say ‘hi!’ at least to both of them. Katherine I never saw in there at all.

However, Faryl stayed the course and circulated well. I initially met her through the Prebendary asking if she could queue-jump to the food. Of course I immediately made way for her but even then she seemed a little put out at ‘queue-jumping’. It gave me the opportunity of telling her how I had nearly met her at Watford, seeing she was accompanied by two BBC chaperones ‘...who seemed to be offering you some singularly unscintillating conversation.’ She laughed in a manner that implied my observation was correct. Unlike Hayley’s infectious giggle, Faryl responds with a warm, quiet but full-bodied laugh, which I suspect can carry a wealth of meaning. In this case it was accompanied with a ‘yes’ which, like her delicate handling of the question posed by Loose Women about Simon Cowell can be interpreted how you want but its you who are interpreting it! This is one shrewd young woman with all her marbles close to hand.

To be continued

Peter S.

[postscript]

2nd Part of Faryl at York.

Later I came across Faryl involved in another conversation and interrupted to know if either or both of her parents were present. In a classic repeat of the incident that Richard will never allow me to forget, when meeting Hayley at St James church I had asked her if Dame Malvina had arrived yet, to find she was at that moment standing next to Hayley, so Faryl introduced her mum and suddenly we were involved in a prolonged conversation.

All that it is proper to report here is that the situation within is precisely as I had envisioned. It is a parallel to Hayley with her parents, they are just four years behind. There is so much that Hayley could help her with, in the way she copes with the when and how of balancing the normality of school (which initially will be a necessary steadying factor to help keep her focused and well grounded) and when to move into the rarified atmosphere of specialism, which will tend to draw her away from normality and its innate sense of realism. Private tutorship takes your feet off the ground and tends to create a rather rarified atmosphere. It will also take her away from the staunch grounding that comes from good friends who knew you before you became famous and therefore give you the reassurance of knowing you for the real simplicity that is 'you'.

It is a frightening time when the dangers of losing grip on reality can take hold unawares. Just like Hayley, I think Faryl has that innate strength, of being a very sensible down-to-earth girl. After all, you can’t be a football team right winger if you don’t know how to put the boot in when needed! I think she can hold her own.

Let me now deal with the concert, “A Golden Evening at York Minster with International mezzo soprano Katherine Jenkins in aid of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign”, which was celebrating fifty years. It was a glossy gold cover with an angled facial of Katherine. All the more reason one might have expected to meet with her. It was her concert. The first significant page was devoted to Katherine, head-to-waist taking one-third of the page with a full column biography.

Opposite, an almost same length column on Faryl with a smaller picture of her and one I have not seen before. I found it intriguing. It was a three-quarter face shot of her looking sideways to the camera with an angled light ensuring her whole face was lit. I found it a wonderfully atmospheric shot, lending mystery and have tracked it down to here: faryl-smith.org/gallery/themes/fansitesme/images/faryl.png. The third of a column length covered Alexei Kalveks and the rest of the page, at least matching Katherine’s column inches detailed the Female Voice Choir (though precisely what a choir would consist of it didn’t have voices I can’t think!), the Rodillian Singers.

I was not familiar with Alexeis but he has sung with Katherine previously, notably at the British Legion’s Remembrance Service in 2008 where there is a Youtube example here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef7J_WcH6wA. This provides an interesting continuity with Hayley launching the 2009 poppy appeal and a comment I made perhaps in this thread a little while ago, posing the question ‘would they this year ask Faryl?’ By that time she will have sung in the Albert Hall at least three times, so should feel comfortable in those surroundings but the emotional mood of that moment might be too demanding on her. The very reason, if she can handle it, is why I think it would be incredible. As Hayley herself said when in Basra, many of the men in her audience were her age or younger. To have a thirteen-year-old girl sing in remembrance of the horror of war while at the same time reminding us that she is only there because of the sacrifices made in World War II, I don’t think there would be a dry eye in the house. Perhaps readers might like to suggest the song/hymn she should sing?

There was a fitting mix between the concert style of the evening and awareness that we were in one of England’s greatest churches. I happened to be sitting next to a recently retired policeman who described the night the cathedral caught fire from a thunderbolt, due to a failing of the electrical conductor. A lesson for other churches, how often is their electrical conductor checked for effectiveness?

First, there was a welcome and prayer from the Precentor of York Minster, Canon Jeremy Fletcher; the Rodillian Singers then gave us a sung version of "The Lord’s Prayer" from African Sanctus by David Fanshaw. A short reading by Richard Atkinson, then we were into the concert proper.

Let me side-track onto a couple of technical points. The amplification was superb. Any failing here would have been instantly noticeable. It matched the quality of the performers and I could not help but mentally compare with the amplification problems Hayley had at Canterbury. One has to take into account a major difference in the proportions of both churches. Further, there seemed an inordinately high proportion of technicians but there were also four video cameras there. While it was obvious there were monitors around the church for those deeper down the aisles this large number of cameras did beg the question, were they preparing for a later DVD?

Two questions: if so, presumably there is a royalty for the charity, another way of acquiring funds (thoughts for Stoke?) and also, here is another outlet for general commercial use beyond the normal album release programme. It was very obvious that the sound was set up specifically for the concert because when the Deputy Chief Executive of the charity delivered his 'farewell and thank you' we were back to the appalling echoing acoustics we had encountered concert-wise at Canterbury. Mentioning this we need to remember that we felt the concert Hayley gave at Banbury was superb (and both times at Shrewsbury Abbey).

What was without doubt is that this concert clearly had very heavy overheads and I wondered how much of the income was swallowed by this. However, in terms of ‘concerts in churches’, technically speaking this was a concert of concert-hall quality. We have already covered the situation with 'RoD' and The Valentine’s Tour, emphasising the very high standard of amplification which these concerts attained. Hayley must now maintain that standard where ever she is, regardless of circumstance. This was the standard delivered at York Minster. Also, I don’t think Hayley’s concerts had provision for TV monitors down the aisle.

To be continued

Peter S.

[postscript]

Concluding Faryl at York Minster.

Warning, as I am writing two weeks plus from the concert without notes, one of the songs I’ll list is wrong--it was replaced after programme printing with something else, about which I was unable to make a note and I have now forgotten which song was replaced.

The Rodillian Singers opened with “Amen--This Little Light of Mine: by Robert A Harris and “O-re-mi” by Robert Bucknor.

Then we were introduced to Alexei Kalveks with three songs: “My Love is Like a Red Red Rose”, Cesar Frank’s “Panis Angelicus”, then Ewan MacCall’s, “The First Time I ever saw Your Face”.

Two more songs from Rodillian Singers, “I am a Small Part of the World” by Jay Althouse and Sally Albrecht and I think it was at this point that the advertised song was replaced.

Then at last we had Faryl with Bernstein’s “Somewhere”. She was then in the rather awkward position of “introducing Katherine”. A situation in which Hayley had once been in with someone else (may have been Dame Malvina) but Faryl (either of her own initiative or prompted by Katherine) phrased it as “I would now like to introduce Katherine Jenkins to the stage.”

They then sang John Newton’s version of “Amazing Grace” and Faryl left the stage to Katherine for a song which I thought was courageous of her, for who in that audience could not be aware of Judy Garland’s version, then only a little older than Faryl. ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. I thought she handled it well. She followed on with “Le Case Cher Sei Per Me” by Rolf Loveland and concluded with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. There wasn’t an interval and maybe this is something Hayley should bear in mind if she does another church venue. Churches are not the ideal places to have concert intervals.

What would count as the ‘second part’ was opened with a reading by Sue Manning of Grace Noll Crowell’s “I Shall Be Glad”

Faryl then followed on with Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus’ reworking especially for her of, “The Way Old Friends Do” and concluded her contribution with the Bach/Gounod version of “Ave Maria”.

The Rodillian Singers then gave us “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”, “Wind Beneath My Wings” (Henry and Silbar) and “As Long as I Have Music” by Don Besig and Nancy Price.

Katherine then concluded the concert part with “Nello Fantasia” (Enio Morricone); Lloyd Webber’s “Music of the Night” and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You”. Following an address on Muscular Dystrophy, a blessing and prayer, Katherine sang “May the Good Lord Keep You”.

Rather than writing immediately, due to diverse circumstances along the way, perhaps a simple statement of where the evening has left me in a ‘final’ memory is all I need say.

First, the overall quality and handling of matters (and I was only some fifteen rows back) lent the atmosphere of a full concert hall experience. This was an excellent programme and I am sure for those less regular in attending such concerts they would have been ‘wowed’.

This was my first opportunity to hear Katherine live and I have to say that my latest concerns of hearing her voice switch into ‘operatic-trained’ mode were dispelled. However, for those readers less-inclined toward opera, I have recently re-acquainted myself with Covent Garden, so the ‘operatic mode of presentation’ does not jar with me, although I remain not too happy with it in concert mode. If I take my mind back to the concert at Cadogan Hall where I met Dame Kiri te Kanawa, Katherine was nowhere near ‘operatic stylism’ as was Kiri. On that occasion Kiri sang with Frederica von Stade, mezzo-soprano. In York we had two mezzos singing a duet. Farly held her own very well indeed. If anyone was ‘weak’ it was Alexei whose voice to my ears seemed to lack body.

The Rodillian Singers are absolutely incredible. I forget the number I counted but I think they were more than 40 strong, ensuring a superb body of sound which appeared to be well arranged. One fundamental difference with the Hayley pattern. All principal singers sung with a full orchestral background. This approach throws me a wobbly. It was good and done very well. However, think of Hayley and accompaniment of live musicians and I’m not sure that isn’t preferable, if only the amplification is what it should be. All in all a superb evening which for me had many lessons for any future Hayley ‘concert in a church’.

Peter S.

[grant]

Hi Peter

Many thanks for your very enlightening report from the concert at York Minster.

I have to say that I would have been disgusted to have paid £100 for a meet and greet and to then have one of the pereformers not turn up without even an explanation as to why. There is simply no excuse for that!

It was certainly a good job that Faryl was there to 'save the day' and, by the sound of it, worth the cost of the ticket on her own. I'm sure that will have done Faryl as much good as it has done KJ harm.

I particularly liked the photo of Faryl that you provided the link to - very cleverly done using natural light from the window and, no doubt, a large reflector behind the photographer. I also much prefer to see Faryl with her lips together. I thought she looked quite lovely portrayed that way, rather than have her teeth 'photoshopped' which some photographers have resorted to in the past.

Best wishes
Grant

[martindn]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for that report. It accords well with what I observed last December, when we saw Faryl with Katherine and Blake at the NIA. At the signing afterwards, Blake and Faryl were there, but no sign of Katherine, which I thought at the time was a bit off, since she was supposedly the star of the show. I didn't bother to queue to meet her, since we had to get back to Leicester. Perhaps someday I will. I am watching Faryl with interest. She doesn't quite blow me away like Hayley to be sure, but she has a great voice and is one to watch for the future.
I have to remember that Hayley was three years older than Faryl when I first saw her. And that she changed my whole attitude to teenage girl singers. I'm not sure and will never know I suspect, how I would have reacted to Hayley if I had first heard her aged 13.

Martin

[postscript]

That three years, Martin can make a lot of difference. I went through a period with Hayley when it seemed I could notice a difference in her development every six months.

Yes, my fascination with Faryl is the talent that is there so young. Give her those three years and I am sure she will be close to Hayley. Not, in the sound of her voice she is NOT another Hayley. the clarity of Hayley's bell-like tones are unique to her and always will be but as I said in an earlier post, Faryl's voice is more the 'expected' sound of a light classical or stage-show singer but with the possibility of going full-bloodied operatic. Whether she should train her voice that way is the great debate of which they are all aware and I am inclined to the view she should be coached into rendering as natural a sound as possible. Therein, in my view at this stage, lies her strength.

Peter S.

[postscript]

Hi Peter,

Er.. "home town accent". Faryl's home town is Kettering, not Birmingham, and the two are quite different. I would expect a Kettering accent to be nearer to Northampton than Birmingham. I live nearer th Birmingham than she does, and I doubt anyone would confuse a Leicester accent with Brummy.
Perhaps her parents are from Birmingham, and that would influence her. But to my ears she doesn't sound like a Brummy.
But West Midalnds accents are a minefield to the unititiated. Birmingham is different from Wolverhampton, each of the potteries towns has a different accent. You need a good ear. But Faryl is, at least according to some less than purists, an East Midlander. (for purists the East Midlands consists of Leicestershire, Derbyshire (which reaches almost to Manchester) and Nottinghamshire. perhaps if you stretch it parts of Staffordshire and Lincolnshire). But I've heard people from Milton Keynes claim to be East Midlanders.
Even I can notice the difference between North London and South London accents. The same distinctions apply further north. I remember my wife Sue's Leicester accent being mistaken for Yorkshire by someone in Wales. OK her mum was a Geordie, and Yorkshire is half way, but I would never confuse the two.

Sorry mods, I've gone off topic again. You must be fed up with me doing that!

Martin

For once i prevented myself from being led astray. The above was Martindn's side track in another thread which I have copied for continuity.

My response, Martin is that i think you have a finer tuned ear than have I. I chose 'Brummy' intending it as a general descriptive term, which perhaps was too crass of me.

I bow to your superior experience in this field and would only observe that my prime intention was the way she switches so easily between the two and the fact that her 'performance English' is obviously consciously deliberate but comes over so totally naturally. It is that for which I give her full marks.

Peter S.

[theoldie]

As a Kettering lad born and bred, I can say that Northamptonshire folk have always regarded themselves as East Midlanders. We are definitely not East Anglians, which began at the old western boundary of Cambridgeshire. We are definitely not South Midlanders, Bedfordshire, and we are not West Midlanders, Warwickshire. As for Faryl's accent, it is certainly a Northamptonshire one. It is not a broad Northants dialect which would make her unintelligible to outsiders, but it retains the vowel sounds, some of which have a more northern sound and some a more eastern. Anyone wishing to know what a genuine broad Northants accent sounds like should listen to a recording of David Neal reading the Uncle Silas stories of H. E. Bates.

[milewalker]

Personally, I find it increasingly difficult to render fair opinions about the spate of rising young singers. My evaluation of Faryl is based, for example on hearing several examples of young singers of "serious" music in recent years. She therefore has a hurdle to cross with me that someone like Charlotte Church did not.

Based solely on what I have heard on line (which is certainly of questionable recording standard) she has a beautiful voice - but I suspect some studio manipulation of her higher notes to make them stronger.

Having said this - I like Faryl a great deal

Jon