Boston based Pop Artist Vilma De Vellis and Bristol Entertainment joined forces to release an innovative cover of Adele's "Someone Like You" in Portuguese titled "Alguem Como Voce". 

When Brazilian-born De Vellis moved to Boston in 2007 she spoke fluent Portuguese and Italian but could not speak English; a definite setback for a career in American Pop music.  But that didn't stop De Vellis. While the obstacles were big, her ambition was bigger. 

She applied herself tenaciously and learned English so she could pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a singer.  Through her hard work she is now trilingual and working intensively in Bristol Studios' Artist Development Program to fast-track her singing career.  This video project came to fruition due to the imagination and keen eye of music producer RIO. De Vellis had to do the work, however, and it wasn't all easy.  She translated the song into Portuguese, which took her two months of intense analysis.  She faced the difficulty of finding the right words that fit with the music and still made sense.  Thankfully she didn't permanently get lost in translation but found her way out with a refined, working version in Portuguese.  After that, everything was pretty much smooth sailing.

De Vellis' early singing began by performing in church and she didn’t become serious about a singing career until she was 18 years old while living in Brazil. She felt she had a late start trying to make it in the highly competitive music industry but after moving to Boston later in life, decided to pursue her dream full force.  She adopted an intensive training schedule with master vocal coach Ric Poulin at Bristol Voice Studios.  She trained multiple times a week for a year, learning the skills needed to improve her craft. 

Poulin's encouragement and her continuous positive outlook and hard work gave her the willpower to pursue singing with the mindset of "I'll get better." 

When asked about the song choice for the video De Vellis' face lit up and she excitedly professed her love and admiration for Adele and this particular song, "I needed to learn this song, and I needed to sing this song because I loved it."  De Vellis worked with Bristol Entertainment choreographer April Forrest preparing for the video to deliver an understated yet highly styled and polished performance appropriate to the setting. When the big moment came, she felt fully prepared and her performance and the filming were executed perfectly as planned. The moral of the story is lots of rehearsals and working with an experienced team.  Of course there were unexpected aspects to the shoot such as curious train riders crowding around and a mounted wall fan in the subway blowing on De Vellis' face, but RIO told her to work with it, to let it be raw and natural, and that's exactly what she did.  De Vellis’ has taken the Performance Workshop at Bristol Studios and had encountered these types of situations before which helped her to handle them in the tough moments during filming. There's even a surprise "guest" at the very end of the video, so viewers will definitely want to watch to the very end.

The warm and welcoming De Vellis created a level of vulnerability in her video that is honest and touching.  Knowing her background and the obstacles she overcame to fulfill her dreams makes the song and video that much sweeter. 

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If you're interested in fulfilling your own passion through music and voice lessons or learning about the process behind the scenes in recording, check out Bristol Studios' website at www.bristolstudios.com or call to set up a free voice consultation 617-247-8689.