Nikki Yanofsky: a little someone
for Yuba-Sutter performers to emulate

Here she is doing Somewhere Over the Rainbow:



Nikki Yanofsky appears to be 12 years old and wowing the crowd at the Montreal Jazz Festival in June 2006. That’s last year.

Wikipedia says she was born in 1994, which would make that estimate about right.

Wikipedia says:

Nikki will also be releasing her own album Nikki - Beginnings in September of 2007. It will be distributed in Canada by Universal. It will include jazz standards, popular songs and one original piece, written by Elan Kunin.

You can also get it online from Verve.

Here's a sampler from Nikki Yanofsky's electronic press kit:



Certain young performers should notice that Yanofsky sings from her lungs and out her throat, not through her nose. She has good diction and crisp enunciation.

She appears to have some sense of personal style, rather than be just copying as exactly as possible the original source, although she does credit Ella Fitzgerald as her inspiration:



Yanofsky also seems to relate well with her audience and with the other performers. That is to say, she is not so self-conscious and concerned with her own self-image.
Do you think she is extraordinarily relaxed about her talent for her age, or does this relative mellowness just come from more practice and more self-confidence?

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