Charice Pempengco

Charice Pempengco
International Star and Youtube Sensation

Charmaine Clarice Relucio Pempengco (born May 10, 1992), best known as Charice Pempengco, or simply Charice (a portmanteau of her first two names), is a Filipina singer who rose to popularity through YouTube.

Pempengco was born in San Pedro, Laguna, Philippines. She and her younger brother, Carl, were raised solely by their mother, Raquel, after they left their father due to domestic violence when Pempengco was three years old.

To help support the family, she began competing in amateur singing contests at age seven, from town fiestas in their province of Laguna to several vocal competitions on TV. She is said to have joined over 80 singing contests.[2]

In 2005, Pempengco joined ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation’s Little Big Star, a talent show in the Philippines loosely patterned after American Idol. Eliminated after her first performance, she was later called back as a wildcard contender and eventually became a finalist. Although she was a consistent top scorer in the final rounds, she only finished in third place via SMS voting.

Pempengco made minor appearances in local television shows and TV commercials, but essentially had fallen off the radar after her stint at Little Big Star. It was not until 2007 that Pempengco gained worldwide recognition after Dave Duenas, an avid supporter, started posting videos of her live performances onto YouTube under the username FalseVoice. The videos garnered millions of hits making Pempengco an internet phenomenon.

Career 2007-2008

In June 2007, Pempengco was invited to do a demo-recording for Ten Songs/Productions, a music publishing company in Stockholm, Sweden. She recorded seven songs - six covers and an original song entitled “Amazing”.[5] A few of these songs were rerecorded for her self-titled Philippine album, Charice.

After a video of her singing the Dreamgirls anthem “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” became a hit on a Korean video sharing website, Pempengco was invited to the South Korean talent show Star King. On the October 13, 2007 edition of the show, she performed “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” and “A Whole New World” with Kyuhyun from Super Junior .

After seeing her Star King performance on YouTube, Ellen Degeneres extended an on-air invitation for Pempengco to be a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Pempengco flew to the United States for the first time and performed two songs on the December 19, 2007 episode of the show - “I Will Always Love You” and “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”.

After her appearance on Ellen, Pempengco made a second appearance on South Korea’s Star King as the “Most Requested Foreign Act” on the December 28 edition of the show. She performed Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” and had a duet with singer Lena Park.

For bringing honor to her home country, Pempengco was invited to the Malacañang Palace in January 2008 where she met and performed for Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. She returned to the international scene in 2008 when she guested at the April 8 episode of the The Paul O’Grady Show in London, England.

Her self-titled Philippine debut album Charice was released in May 2008. The mini album, consisting of six songs and six backing tracks, was awarded gold certification in the Philippines in October 2008. The album was eventually recognized to have achieved platinum status in 2009.[12] Pempengco appeared on the May 12 edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show in an episode entitled the “World’s Smartest Kids”, in which she performed Whitney Houston’s “I Have Nothing”. It was through the recommendation of Oprah Winfrey that music producer David Foster took Pempengco under his wing. She performed with Foster for the first time as one of the entertainers on the May 17 opening of MGM Grand at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, Connecticut.

She made her debut on the international concert stage on Foster’s May 23 tribute concert, Hitman: David Foster and Friends, at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. She performed a medley of songs from The Bodyguard as well as her standard, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”. A CD/DVD of the concert, which included Pempengco’s The Bodyguard medley, was released on November 11, 2008. The show was aired several times on PBS and other public television networks starting in December 2008 under the Great Performances banner.

One of the other performers at the concert was Pempengco’s idol, Andrea Bocelli. Bocelli subsequently expressed interest in performing a duet with Pempengco and personally invited her to be a guest on his birthday concert “The Cinema Tribute” held on July 20 at the Teatro del Silenzio in his hometown of Lajatico, Tuscany, Italy. Aside from her solo performances, she also did a duet of the song “The Prayer” with the famous tenor in front of more than 8,000 people.

Pempengco was invited to perform for the Feyenoord’s Centennial Anniversary in the Netherlands held on September 26. Before a crowd of about 50,000 football (soccer) fans she sang the team’s anthem, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

Pempengco made a second appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show on the September 9 “Dreams Come True” episode, in which Oprah referred to her as “The Most Talented Girl in the World.” She sang Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” with David Foster on piano, then Oprah went on to surprise her with an appearance by Celine Dion via satellite, who invited her to sing a special duet at Madison Square Garden as part of Dion’s Taking Chances Tour.

She performed her promised duet with Celine Dion at Madison Square Garden in New York City on September 15. They sang “Because You Loved Me,” which was dedicated to Pempengco’s mother. The performance received rave reviews in The New York Post and The New York Times.The duet was eventually featured on the September 19 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Pempengco would then perform at the October 11 Andre Agassi Grand Slam for Children Benefit Concert at Wynn Las Vegas. It was at this event that she met one of her musical influences, Mariah Carey.

In November, she appeared on Good Morning America with David Foster to promote David Foster’s tribute album, Hitman: David Foster and Friends. She performed The Bodyguard medley and “I Will Survive.” At the end of the month, she performed “Because You Loved Me” on the Good Housekeeping Showboat float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

2009

In January 2009, Pempengco performed at two presidential pre-inaugural events in Washington, D.C., namely the Martin Luther King Jr Realizing The Dream Gala at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and at the Pearl Presidential Inaugural Gala at the Mandarin Hotel.

In February, she performed at two post-Oscar award events, Oscar Night at Mr. Chow’s and Oprah’s Oscar After Party. She debuted a new original song entitled “Fingerprint”, which was written by Robbie Nevil and produced by David Foster.

In April, Pempengco appeared as one of the guests in the season premiere of Ti lascio una canzone, an Italian musical variety show televised from Teatro Ariston in the city of Sanremo.She performed “I Will Always Love You”, “I Have Nothing”, “The Prayer”, and “Listen”. Later that same month, she would go on to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in front of about 57,000 baseball fans during the Los Angeles Dodgers 52nd season home opener at Dodger Stadium.

In May, Pempengco released her Philippine sophomore album entitled My Inspiration, an inspirational album with a Mother’s Day theme. The album consisted of 12 tracks, including an original composition by Jonathan Manalo entitled “Always You” and a cover of Helen Reddy’s “You and Me Against the World” performed as a duet with her mother, Raquel. The album was certified gold in the Philippines about two months after release. Also in May, she would again perform at a David Foster and Friends concert held at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

For the third time, Pempengco made an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show on the May 18 “Finale: Oprah’s Search for the World’s Most Talented Kids” episode. She debuted her first internationally released single “Note to God”, which was written by Diane Warren and produced by David Foster. The single was also made available for digital download on the same day and debuted at #24 on Billboard’s Hot Digital Songs chart, #44 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, #9 on the Hot Canadian Digital Singles chart and #35 on the Canadian Hot 100 chart. Later that same month, she was again invited to guest at Ti lascio una canzone for their May 23 finale episode and the May 30 gala episode.

Pempengco staged her first major solo concert dubbed Charice: The Journey Begins on June 27 at the SMX Convention Center, SM Mall of Asia, Philippines to a sold-out crowd. Her guests included Christian Bautista, Kuh Ledesma (a last minute substitution for one of the main guests and one of Pempengco’s musical influences, Regine Velasquez, who was hospitalized right before the show) and Little Big Star finalists.

Pempengco contributed to two Christmas albums in 2009. The first as David Archuleta’s duet partner for the song “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” in his Christmas album entitled Christmas from the Heart.The second is a compilation Christmas album entitled A Very Special Christmas Volume 7 in which she contributed her own rendition of “The Christmas Song”.

She is one of the headlining acts in the David Foster and Friends 10-City North American Tour scheduled for the fall of 2009. She has recently stated in a video posted on her YouTube account that her international debut album is slated for release in January 2010. She will be releasing a new single entitled “Pyramid” (featuring Sean Kingston) also in January 2010 to coincide with the release of her debut album.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charice_Pempengco
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