Students who have been to the annual Phi Sigma Sigma talent show or any talent show at Pace, have most likely had good chance to have had the pleasure of hearing the voice of junior Abigail Bucknor.
Her soulful performances have become a staple at Pace talent shows and rightfully earned for them the term showstopper. During her performance last fall, she made the entire room fall silent as she belted out Beyoncé’s song “Listen,” which is exactly what happened.
“Typically I like to think I’m a humble person, I just want to sing,” Bucknor said. “But, in those moments, I feel really big and I love the connection you have with your audience when you truly captivate them.”
Bucknor, a childhood education major with a concentration in history, has the need and the passion for both teaching and music. The bulk of her musical education stems from the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens, NY, where Bucknor went through a rigorous course load of two or three music classes a day for four years.
“We performed at a lot of awesome events, we sold out Carnegie Hall twice, we were on Tyra once with the cast of Glee, and then actually performed at a lot of business parties and Christmas parties,” Bucknor said.
Since high school, she’s been staying low key about flaunting her skills by only performing at some competitions at Pace and singing in her church choir. She had originally planned on attending a conservatory like Berkley, Columbia, or Julliard, but the reality of the music industry set in, so she decided to take a different approach to it.
“I just really want to teach, I love kids. I was working at a summer camp and I taught the kids ‘Friday’ by Rebecca Black. It may seem like an annoying song, but they pulled it off, in fact, they got a standing ovation, it was so lovely and it gave me so much joy,” Bucknor said.
Although the whole Rebecca Black selection may be disheartening to some; rest assured, Bucknor enjoys a vast amount of music.
“I listen to a lot of classic soul music and jazz, it’s how I create my sound. I love Alicia Keys and John Legend; I think their voices are so smooth. I think there’s a lot of female talent out there that can’t sing, their voices aren’t being used properly and even if they can sing, their voices are being auto tuned and it sounds very mechanical, which I don’t think is appealing,” Bucknor said.
Having such a strong musical upbringing between high school and her musically inclined family, Bucknor has realized the importance of musical education.
“It’s important that we teach music, I’m so much better at speaking publicly and performing thanks to it. Music gave me my outward appearance of being calm even when I’m nervous, for instance I’m nervous right now, do I seem nervous? I’m sweating bullets. Music. It does wonders; it teaches you how to breathe properly, it will teach you everything,” Bucknor said.