Fifteen-year-old Kyle Ahn wowed the crowd at the Asian Pacific American Institute of Congressional Studies’ gala dinner on May 15 with his rendition of the National Anthem.

The Alexandria, Virginia resident who also goes by the monicker “Vocalz,” has been performing onstage since he was five. In the past ten years, he has transitioned from singing at community events to high-profile award ceremonies and political events. He is currently working to gain a wider audience in the music industry, particularly in R&B and hip hop.

Small for his age, he wore a baggy T-shirt and sported a diamond stud on his left ear during the interview. Despite his full performance schedule and most of his life as a professional singer, Kyle is also a regular teenager who plays video games and plays with his friends after school. When he talked about going on a plane ride for the first time and staying in a “big, fancy hotel Beverly Hill,” where he performed at the Milken Family Foundation’s annual award ceremony, he sounded very much like a child.

But he is also polite and well-spoken beyond his age. During the interview, the ninth grader at Mt. Vernon High School talked about his love for poetry and Langston Hughes. Unlike most teenagers, he does not sprinkle his conversation with teen lingo such as “like” and “cool.” When he talked about his music, he was thoughtful and seemed to have a clear sense of his music and his career.

“You want to write something that a lot people are going to buy into and feel like that sounds like their story,” he said when talking about the lyrics he writes.

Singing Mom

Kyle’s mother, Sally B. Waller, is undoubtedly the driving force behind his career. During the interview, both Kyle and Waller often referred to “we” as they talked about Kyle’s performance, and in a way, Kyle’s career is very much a joint venture. Waller herself used to be a singer with D.C. area bands before she had a family. She sometimes sang backup in Kyle’s demo and is Kyle’s voice coach and de facto manager.

Waller first realized that her pride in Kyle’s voice was more than a mother’s bias when Kyle sang “Over the Rainbow” in school at age five. “I always loved his voice but I thought that’s just because I’m his mother,” she said. “But I looked around and saw the reaction on other people’s faces when he performed. Other people really responded to (his singing).”

Kyle used to be known as the adorable kid in suit and tie who sang “God Bless America” at political events. “For the longest time, he was so small and tiny,” said Waller. “He was just so adorable.”

However, at 15, after going through a growth spurt and voice change, his performance also called for readjustment. “I’m settling into it now,” Kyle said with a shy smile, talking about the voice change. After a few awkward moments in public when he missed the high notes, he lowered his key and began “doing more riff-y type ad-lib, making it more soulful, making it his style,” Waller explained.

At the same time, Kyle is also taking more initiative in writing his own music and defining his performance style. “It seems like (music) is getting more fun for me when I get older,” he said. “It seems like I’m getting more out of it.”

“I really like the idea that he’s really coming into his own,” Waller said. “Now he’s more responsible and he knows the business and he knows what the expectations are.” Nowadays, Kyle is so much in charge of his own performance that during the recent show at the Milken Foundation, Waller could simply enjoy the show without worrying about the technical details. As she put it, “I just sat down and felt like a mom.”

This summer, Kyle and Waller hope to finish a demo of songs that are “a combination between jazz and older music–older qualities put into new beats”–and start launching a wider campaign to promote him to producers and record labels.

Just like any mother, Waller has great hopes for Kyle. “I know he’s going to be something really great,” said Waller. “’Do whatever you want,’ I tell him, ‘but at least do something that’s going to touch other people’s hearts and inspire them.’”