At this time last year, vocalists Lex V. Crump and Amiracle Evans were thinking about which songs to enter for the 49th annual DownBeat student music awards, the respected international competition. Now, they’re winners. 

Lex’s and Amiracle’s awards appear in the June issue of DownBeat, along with that of a third MHSA student, Adrian McCants. Adrian won in the Small Jazz Combo division for High School Honors Ensemble Outstanding Performance, as a member of the Milwaukee Jazz Institute’s A Train ensemble.

Amiracle, a soprano who graduated in June from Milwaukee High School of the Arts, was named DownBeat magazine’s Performing Arts High School Winner. Lex, also a soprano, won the category of Performing Arts High School Outstanding Performance. Lex graduated from MHSA last year but was still eligible for the competition of 2025 performances. Both women won in the Blues/Pop/Rock Soloist division.

“It just immediately turns heads,” MHSA Choral Director Raymond Roberts said of winning what he called an iconic competition. “It immediately bumps them into this echelon of excellence that everybody knows. It really signifies their commitment and dedication, and it opens doors for them.”

“It means a lot to me,” Lex said. “I think, as a music student, it is a very high honor to win an international award such as the DownBeat award.”

Student musicians from colleges, high schools, and middle schools submit recordings to be considered for the prestigious DownBeat awards. Professional musicians and educators judge their recordings on 10 criteria, including a musician’s presence, creativity, technique, phrasing, and material. 

DownBeat accepts only audio submissions. Without video, the singers have only their voice to connect with the judges, Mr. Roberts noted. 

The Song Matters

He works with students on choosing repertoire that they can connect with or that shows off their voices to their best advantage — or both. That begins in summer with his Summer Music Academy at MHSA. September, and the start of school, is already too late when submissions for contests are due from October through December, he noted. 

Especially when a singing competition is based on voice only, “You have got to communicate, through just your voice, the connection. And I think because of that detail, and that emphasis we place on being connected to the song, that it comes through,” he said.

Mr. Roberts also encourages singers to include an uptempo song, to help show their range, and to choose pieces that other competitors are unlikely to pick.

“I love that they respond to that and see the value in selecting repertoire that fits their voice, that they can connect to, that isn’t run of the mill, the flavor-of-the-day kind of thing,” Mr. Roberts said. Those qualities help singers stand out in contests, he said. 

Their Winning Styles

As for Amiracle and Lex’s appeal to the judges, Mr. Roberts added, “There’s a maturity in their interpretation that I believe really is noticeable and does help them stand out.” The singers delivered, he said, and they won out over scores of competitors.

Describing their styles, Mr. Roberts said, “Lex just really centers the line on outstanding pop singing… The way she mixes her tone, from her chest register to her head register, is amazing. … It’s just exquisite. And you can’t stop wanting to listen to more of it.”

“Amiracle,” he said, “has this innate ability to capture just pure blues and gospel-y kind of nuance and bring it appropriately into popular styles of singing, and it’s just beautiful. It doesn’t change the fact that she’s singing pop music, but it makes her stand out in a way that informs everyone of the aural tradition from which she comes … She infuses pop music with some of those distinct, unique stylistic traits. She’s extraordinary at that.”

Their Winning Songs 

Lex sang Adele’s “One and Only” (three keys up from Adele) and Estelle’s “American Boy” for the competition, and Amiracle sang Gladys Knight and the Pips’ “If I Were Your Woman” and Janet Jackson’s “Together Again.”

“You don’t want to just sing notes; you want to sing feelings, as well,” Lex said. “If you don’t connect with the music, people aren’t going to connect with your work.”

She wanted to sing “One and Only” for that reason. “I think as humans, if we’re lucky enough, we get to relate to experiencing a deep love and devotion like that,” Lex said. 

Amiracle has always been a fan of Janet Jackson and knew she wanted to sing “Together Again.” As for “If I Were Your Woman,” “I knew that song really well because I grew up on music like that — Gladys, Aretha.” But when Mr. Roberts suggested she sing the 1970 song for the competition, “I was like, whoa, I didn’t even know that was an option.”

She says she strives to make a song her own while respecting the original. “The song gave me freedom to do what I wanted,” she said, but she kept in mind that “the person who sang it is basically an icon.”

Awards on Top of Awards

The 2026 DownBeat awards aren’t the only prizes Amiracle and Lex have won; they’re just the latest. 

Amiracle in 2025 won the national YoungArts competition in the pop voice category, and in Summer 2025 attended the first Kaleidoscope Vocal Academy at Yale University, one of 24 students selected through auditions. In February 2026, she was one of CIVIC MUSIC MKE’s 10 student winners from metro Milwaukee to perform in the organization’s annual Showcase Recital and one of four of the group’s scholarship winners. 

Lex in 2025 was the DownBeat Performing Arts High School Winner in the Blues/Pop/Rock Soloist division and won the YoungArts competition in the classical voice category. She was one of the 10 student musicians chosen to perform at the CIVIC MUSIC Showcase Recital in 2023, 2024, and 2025, and won the organization’s scholarship in 2023 and 2024. (The scholarship can’t be granted three consecutive years.)

What’s next for the MHSA sopranos? 

Up next: more schooling. Lex completed her freshman year at Fisk University in Nashville and is transferring this fall to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Amiracle will be attending the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and has received a full tuition scholarship to sing in the school’s Vesper Choir. 

After that: Both women ultimately have dreams of being on Broadway. Amiracle said her more immediate goal is “to start with the thing I know best, performing.” 

“I love performing — by myself, with people. That’s my element, being on stage.” She’d like to branch out into songwriting and release her own music. 

Lex said she wants to have a versatile career, above all. “I never want to be in a box, is my thing,” she said. She wants to be able to dive into all musical styles, as she did at MHSA with the encouragement of Mr. Roberts, who cross-trains his singers in various genres. She would like to write her own music and dabble in arranging music, as well. Grateful for the positive role models she had in her musical upbringing, she hopes to mentor young singers herself someday. 

Music for both Amiracle and Lex is unifying and gratifying. 

“One thing that the world has in common is that everyone loves music,” Amiracle said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re into rock, metal, country — some form of music always reaches out to someone.”

“Music is everything to me,” Lex said. “It was my first love. It was my escape from a lot of things. It was my outlet; it’s how I express myself. Music is my life. 

“Roberts likes to say we eat, sleep, and breathe music. I try to embody that,” she added. “I feel like I channel a different side of me. Singing is such a vulnerable thing. That’s what makes it difficult but also makes it beautiful at the same time.”

Why MHSA

Each is grateful for her experience at MHSA.

“What goes on at that school is very special,” Lex said. “A lot of that can be credited to Mr. Roberts.” She noted that MHSA celebrated its 40th anniversary during her senior year last year, and Mr. Roberts now has taught at the school for 35 years. 

“What he does for students and what he’s done for me, I can’t thank him enough,” she said.

Any student having difficulties can find a refuge in music, Amiracle said. “He made sure Room 100” — the choir room — “is a safe place. If you need to sing, you can get it out.”

Amiracle started singing at age 4 and sang in church, but she gave it up after she was bullied, she said. She returned to music in 8th grade because of an aunt and decided to enroll at MHSA, auditioning for vocal music. “My plan was to just go in and just be a choir kid” — to blend in, not stand out.

But Mr. Roberts heard her sing solo her sophomore year and recommended she try out for a competition. She wasn’t sold on it but did it, and kept doing it. 

“Falling back in love with music was all because of my aunt and Mr. Roberts. I don’t think I would be where I am without him,” Amiracle said. 

Singing for the Future

Mr. Roberts noted that each semester, over four years, music students at MHSA learn a new solo in a variety of genres; the solos could be used for a competition or in the future.

“If students do want to continue to study music past high school, then they have all their audition rep” — repertoire — “ready to go. It’s just kind of built in. You don’t get that anywhere else,” he said. 

At MHSA, “You’re not just singing in really good choirs; you’re studying music at a really high level. All the students get a piano class, they get a music theory class, and then their junior and senior year, they have two choirs. They can audition for the jazz groups or opera workshop. There’s only a handful of high school opera programs across the country, mostly at arts schools,” he noted.

“I’m so grateful for the support and perpetuation of programs like these,” Mr. Roberts said. “My life was transformed and shaped by being a student at an arts high school. It changes lives.”