Amira today, her talent and life

So where is Amira today? Or, more importantly, where is she at in her career?

After her mother's divorce from her father in the end of 2017, Amira and her mother and brother moved to South Africa, her mother's ancestral home. She speaks Dutch, English, and fluent Afrikaans, the official language of South Africa. 

The family has a lovely house in Potchefstroom.

After moving permanently to South Africa, Amira did some important performances and completed her third album. But after that things went down hill. Not only did she have a parting with her manager and her record label that also owned the major shows she had become a constant feature in, but Coleske Artists began to move away from classics toward more pop themes. Amira was slowly cut out. 

To make matters worse, Amira has a complex voice, and it began to show signs of strain in late 2019. This was greatly exacerbated by her voice changing due to puberty, and there were rumors she might lose her voice entirely. This was a painful time for us fans and we mostly kept such concerns private. 

In March 2020, things took yet another turn for the worse when South Africa instituted severe lockdowns due to the Covid epidemic. Amira's family had no choice but to take these rules very seriously, and for the next five months or more, Amira's movements were severely limited. She was able to continue to communicate with her fans in the outside world mostly through her Nonprofit and many European supporters, who continued to make videos from messages she would film. 

Then in September 2020, to the amazement of her fans, Amira announced she was recording a streaming concert. Soliciting the help of the extremely talented musical entrepreneur Charl du Pressis, her fans were treated to an interview about their upcoming collaboration. She looked more beautiful than ever, but still had that childlike innocence. 

Since that interview on Sep 7, 2020, Amira has in fact recorded two streaming concerts. Now due to copyright laws I cannot show these songs here. Between the two concerts Amira sings 18 songs she never recorded before. So there is quite a bit that is not on YouTube. 

But this is necessary and requires some explaining. Amira does not own the rights to any of the YouTube videos of her, and receives no income from them. The CD industry is devastated by YouTube and she hardly receives any money from her three CDs, and what little she does she gives much of to her nonprofit organization Gelukskinders. 

So for this reason any new work by Amira is behind a paywall. Otherwise it is all stolen and goes to YouTube where she does not make a cent. 

But I can say that any doubts about Amira's voice were completely removed with her last streaming concert. She came through that period with a stronger voice than ever, just as moving, but much more adult. Registers of her voice that were weak or missing are now filled in. And she has received intensive new voice coaching. Songs are also more carefully chosen for her voice. 

While I cannot share the new sounds I can share just a bit of what she has made publicly available, and also show some of the beautiful stills from her new concerts. 

Here are 48 seconds of her broadway song "I Feel Pretty" (Westside Story) from her concert "This is My Dream" released in September. 

 

And here are some screenshots from her streaming concerts that show how beautiful and mature she has gotten.

And this is her latest rendition of The Lord's Prayer.

And as for her life, we only know what she tells us. She is in love, but we don't know with whom. She plans to move to NY city after High School. She has two more years. She wants to tour for a year before college and wants to go to Juilliard. Her plans include her brother Fincent moving to NY with her where he will study science. We will see.