Celebration of Music - Talent Search

My name is Emmanuelle Sasson. My friends call me Em, for short. I'm currently 15 years old (almost 16), and I have an older sister and 2 adorable little dogs. As you can already tell, I love music. It has always been in my blood and it’s the oxygen I breathe. When I was 2 years old, I held my first guitar. It was 3 times my size, but I had so much fun with it. I obviously didn’t know how to play it yet, so I just hit random strings and yelled (I called it “singing” at the time). I turned 4, and for my birthday, my parents got me a toy guitar. I remember flying to Israel to visit my family and playing that toy guitar in my aunt’s living room with a diaper and a tank top. I sang “Happy Birthday”. I turned 5 and told my dad that I wanted to start taking guitar lessons. He happily agreed, and at age 6, I had my first guitar teacher. It was a bit of a struggle in the beginning, but I knew that that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

When I turned 7, I realized that I had some singing talent in me. I just belted some notes that didn’t sound so bad, and my parents finally opened their eyes, like “Oh wow, this girl can sing.” At 8 years old, I learned new songs and at that point, I began to teach myself songs on guitar and how to sing them. I listened to artists like Ed Sheeran, Beyoncé, Green Day, Michael Jackson, and whatever my mom was playing on her iPod. I took my guitar to school on some days and played for the class. Some people asked me for my autograph! I just scribbled my initials.

9 years old came around, and I taught myself bass. It was a pretty simple task, since I already knew how to play guitar. My voice got better, and all I would do everyday was play more and more songs. At 10, I played drums for the band my guitar teacher had. The band consisted of a bunch of his students. I had a lot of fun at those gigs. Then at 11, I took my singing seriously and went to a studio to record covers. I covered “Wide Awake” by Katy Perry, and another song that I don’t quite remember. My voice is very different from the “typical singing voice” of today. Some people think I'm Irish or British, and I even get compared to Shakira or Amy Winehouse.

At 12, I wanted to learn piano. My parents tried to get me a piano teacher, but it didn’t work out. So my mom bought me a keyboard from Amazon. I sat in front of that thing for hours upon hours with my iPad, watching YouTube tutorials. 2 weeks went by, and I could play fluently. Then I turned 13, and taught myself ukulele. Ukulele is easy, so it wasn’t much of a struggle. At 14, I found an incredible vocal coach who pushes me to be the best version of myself. She also “sparked” my songwriting. I wrote an entire album in a year, but I never got to record it until now. At 15 (now), my parents saw that this whole songwriting thing was serious, so they got me an entire home studio! I'm in that room more than my bedroom. I perform in school a lot, and that really helped me build my confidence. I'm so excited to for what the future has to offer, and I'm more than ready to spread my music to the world. Hello, music industry. Ready or not, here I come!