Jennifer Fletcher goes from Pure Gold to pure gold singer

If you like a little Puccini with your Christmas pudding, make a reservation for the Blue Willow Tea Room tomorrow evening.

That’s where you’ll hear the amazing voice of Gravenhurst opera singer Jennifer Fletcher. The York University student is home for Christmas and will be singing a selection of festive and classical pieces in the intimate dining room at Muskoka Wharf.  Her mom, Elaine, works there.

Gravenhurst Rotarians were treated to a taste of her repertoire at Monday’s appreciation lunch for the local clergy. It was the second year that club member Jim Cruickshank had arranged for her to sing, with her accompanist Dean Perry, the minister of music at Trinity United Church in Gravenhurst who helped launch her vocal studies. Fletcher, who was just in her final year of high school, sang beautiful, traditional carols then.

What a difference a year makes. For Rotarians this week, it sounded like:

An angel we had heard on high

Sweetly singing o’er the plains

And the mountains in reply

Echoing her joyous strains

Gloria, in Excelsis Deo!

With only one strike-interrupted semester under her belt, Fletcher was able to forego the seasonal holiday favourites – save for a lovely version of White Christmas. Instead, the audience was enraptured with her soft, simple, and crystal clear singing – even if they didn’t understand a word she was saying.

It earned her a standing ovation – one of many she had better get used to. At just 18, Fletcher is already comfortable in the world of opera and classical singing.

Familiar to local music fans at GHS Pure Gold shows at the Opera House as one half of a singing duo with her older sister Mandy (and a family quartet), Fletcher’s solo career has a new dimension. Celine Dion pop songs have been replaced with arias and new idols like American sopranos Kathleen Battle and Renée Flemming.

Fletcher’s talent for singing was discovered and nurtured by Perry – himself a gifted organist and choir director – who guided her for her formative few years, while passing her along to one of his musical mentors, Orillia vocal coach Doreen Simmons.

And it was Simmons, who has worked with her the past couple of years, who arranged an audition with Fletcher’s current vocal coach at York, Catherine Robbins. But it was all done, almost reluctantly.

Fletcher hadn’t made up her mind on post-secondary study. “I knew I could sing, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do, for sure.” Last February’s York audition changed her mind.

So has her progress. She is now taking music performance with her major being classical voice. She does an hour a week with Robbins, along with music theory music, general arts, theatre and dance. It’s a four-year program.

You have to be ready for anything.She says she’s learning a lot and while it’s “challenging” at times, she says she’s keeping up.

And she’s enjoying it. But there’s no more Celine. “You don’t study pop. Classical singing is better for your voice. It’s the right way of singing.” “My friends have told me I should try out for Canadian Idol,” she says, admitting it has crossed her mind – but not seriously. But for now she’ll just “go with the flow,” and see where her voice takes here.

Already she’s won four gold in October at a Newmarket singing festival, which features a lot of fellow York U. singing students. And she’s also sung at Wilfrid Laurier and other venues, such as Alliston, where they too have discovered her beautifully-maturing voice.

She says opera-trained students often do post-grad study or go to Europe for further training.

Right now, she’s happy to be home for Christmas and singing with her sister (a nursing student at Trent) on Christmas Eve, accompanied by Perry at Trinity United, and also with the Cellar Singers’ Penny Varney.

So, if you can’t get to church Christmas Eve or hear her recital at the Blue Willow tomorrow, you’ll probably have to wait for Carnegie – not the old library.

And you’ll likely catch her – some day – at the Gravenhurst Opera House, where she’ll be a natural headliner in her old alma mater hall. And you can say you knew her when.