Dream with Me is the second full-length album (first on a major label) by American singer Jackie Evancho. It was released on June 3, 2011 on digital download format, and on June 14, 2011 in the standard CD format. Evancho was eleven years old when this album was released, although she was still ten when it was recorded. The album was produced by 16-time Grammy award winner David Foster.
This album features duets with Barbra Streisand and Britain's Got Talent runner-up Susan Boyle, as well as twelve solo tracks. The album debuted at number 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, reached number 1 on the Billboard's US Classical Chart, and was certified gold by the RIAA. The singer promoted the album on talk shows, in a popular PBS Great Performances special and through a national concert tour with symphony orchestras at Lincoln Center, throughout the U.S. and elsewhere.
Promotion and concerts
Evancho promoted the album on talk shows on every major U.S. network and concerts in the U.S., London and Toronto. A deluxe edition of Dream With Me, available exclusively from Target, featured four bonus tracks: "Someday", "Mi Mancherai", "The Impossible Dream" and "A Time For Us".
Evancho performed nearly the same songs as those on the Dream With Me CD for her first solo concert televised special, which first aired in June 2011 on PBS stations ("The Prayer" was omitted, but "Dark Waltz" and "Mi Mancherai" were added). The program was part of the PBS Great Performances series, co-produced by SYCO/Columbia. It was frequently rebroadcast during 2011, and by early August 2011, the special had been broadcast nearly 2,000 times. It became "one of the most viewed specials in the 38-year-history of the Great Performances series [and] raised record amounts of money for PBS stations." The special continued to be shown into 2013.
Evancho was the youngest solo artist ever to headline a special on the Great Performances series. The concert was taped in April 2011 at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, and was co-hosted by David Foster, who played the piano in the orchestra for many of the selections, while Conrad Tao played piano and violin in some selections. The performances are available as a CD/DVD titled Dream With Me In Concert. Allmusic noted: "the concert version ... sounds nearly identical (outside of the waves of applause) to the studio album ... but the accompanying DVD, which features the heavily choreographed performance, as well as an extensive photo gallery and interviews with both Evancho and Foster, should provide enough eye and ear candy to appease fans of the gifted young vocalist until a proper follow-up appears.
In July 2011, the singer began her first official tour across the United States, to promote the album. It consisted of a series of performances with symphony orchestras, beginning with the Sun Valley Orchestra on July 31, followed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra on August 5, the Ravinia Festival Orchestra on August 7, the Omaha Symphony Orchestra on August 26, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on August 31 and her hometown Pittsburgh Opera on October 16. Conductor Antony Walker took the opportunity to introduce her fans (many of whom were newcomers to opera) to the Pittsburgh Opera's chorus and soloists, who performed several numbers from Verdi, Bizet and Puccini along with Evancho's repertoire. Evancho made her New York City concert debut at Avery Fisher Hall with songs from the album on November 7, 2011. Her last concert of the year was in Las Vegas with David Foster in Las Vegas on December 29.
After presenting her concert in Japan in January 2012 with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Evancho resumed her U.S. "Dream With Me" tour later the same month in California. She gave three more concerts in February, with the San Diego Symphony, in Los Angeles, and with Fresno Grand Opera's orchestra, and another three in March, in San Francisco, Sacramento, and West Valley City, Utah. In June 2012, she concluded the tour with performances in Alpharetta, Georgia and Newark, New Jersey.