When You Wish Upon a Star - Amira Willighagen

I would like to share the small way that I helped with the above recording. A bit over a year ago, Amira made a video tribute to the great Italian composer Ennio Morricone upon his passing. She had no professional equipment to do it. But she went in her bathroom and recorded the track on her cell phone, then had her mother film her in a garden lip-syncing to the words. Amira edited the film herself. It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnz5Teivvqc

I was very impressed when I heard all this and saw the film. I'm a film school graduate and know how much pinache and tinacity it takes to do a thing like that. And then it occurred to me how wonderful it would be if Amira had some better recording equipment in case she ever had such an urge to make her own productions again.

I shared my thoughts with my friend Leandro in Italy, who is also a fan. Leandro thought it was a good idea. I told him I thought it would make sense to start by seeing if it was possible to get a group together to raise money for a professional microphone for Amira. Leandro in turn contacted a fellow fan named Jimmy who lives in Atlanta, who often steers such committees to help Amira with her career. Jimmy liked the idea, and asked Leandro and I to do some research. Making a long story short, after presenting Jimmy with some proposals, Jimmy talked directly to Amira about the idea and it was decided to go to the chief sound engineer for Amira's most recent concerts, Fuzz Senekal. Fuzz eventually settled on an operatic microphone that had to be ordered from Germany. I did not personally participate in the money raising for the microphone, but chose instead to help with another project. It took a very long time for the microphone to arrive in South Africa from Germany, due to Covid 19 and how difficult it is to ship anything to South Africa. But it did finally arrive.

The above performance was the first ever that Amira actually utilized her new expensive microphone we had ordered for her, and it is featured prominently in the video. This microphone was chosen especially for Amira's unique voice. Even I was shocked how expensive it was. I think you can hear in this recording that it captured Amira's voice with unbelievable crystal clear quality and with zero distortion of any kind. When Jimmy told me this was the actual microphone, I felt so proud to have played a small part in its acquisition. And I was so pleased with the acoustic result. Incidentally, the mic is very similar to one used by Luciano Pavarotti near the end of his life. A long way from using a cell phone in her bathroom.