If anyone ever tells you that you put too much Parmesan cheese on your pasta, stop talking to them. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.
Just a guess, but she may have been instructed to use a different vowel sound to make it easier to belt. I've never really known the "a" vowel to be that difficult though so who knows. It's usually "e" that gets to people.
I don't think it disturbs me too much. Its a little weird but she sounds fantastic. I can actually listen to her "Maybe" and "Tomorrow" over and over again cuz unlike many other Annie's (besides Andrea McArdle) she doesn't sound like a little brat screeching and screaming. I kinda like what they did with the crescendo on "and say" with the orchestra kind of getting more triumphant, however I wish the orchestra in general sounded fuller. It sounds so empty compared to the OBC.
"Life in theater is give and take...but you need to be ready to give more then you take..."
Oh come now, I think this is petty. And I'm a picky mofo!
It's obvious to me she sings "say" and not "sigh."
Plus, the "i" sound is not as easy to belt as the "a" sound, so changing it to that wouldn't make sense. It's obvious the girl can sing and and if it sounds like "sigh," it's down to the uniqueness of the actress and how she naturally pronounces certain words. Besides, it's not so off even if she literally sang "sigh."
The orchestrations for "Tomorrow" made me cringe and I am not familiar with the original orchestrations at all. They just sounded off and almost to be doing some countermelody thing that didn't gel. The rest of the promo sounded great, though.
All of the sets looked great, but I agree the NYC one looked too bare. As for the dimness of the lighting, it looks alright to me. Cameras rarely capture the lighting design of a show well enough to judge from a video clip.
Recreation of original John Cameron orchestration to "On My Own" by yours truly. Click player below to hear.
There are, in fact, a great many accent-related choices reflected in this video by different actors, and that's precisely what this is. There are, of course, lots of accents (even in real life) that drive many people crazy, but that's America. I feel quite certain this "say" that sounds more like "sigh" is a CHOICE, and that the actor has been instructed to employ it. I am equally certain that, if the MD had a problem with it as the OP here does, it would have been erased.
With the exception of the sung "day/gray", her belted "a" sounds veer on that open "a-i", listen to the a-way at the end it def has that same a-i inflection which meets the rhyme. That "gray" even has an odd "a" sound.
I don't think this is any choice, it's just her getting that s-out with the ai sound....to me the transition that follows is the hardest part of the song. If almost sounds like she's a Brit fudging an American accent. She's great though.