He could have chosen something safe, something simple that would let him get through the nerves and walk offstage with a polite round of applause. Instead, Jamie chose “Bring Him Home,” the haunting, demanding ballad from Les Misérables. It’s the kind of song that exposes every crack in a voice and lays bare the singer’s emotion. For anyone else, it might have been a gamble; for Jamie, it was a kind of quiet defiance—an expression of a talent he had kept hidden for years, perhaps because he didn’t know where else to put it.
