Teen jazz sensation Nikki Yanofsky takes Toronto

While most teens might celebrate a birthday with a party with friends, Montreal jazz sensation Nikki Yanofsky will toast turning 14 thisweekend with a concert at New York's famed Carnegie Hall.

"It's the best birthday present ever," Yanofsky, in Toronto for a sold-out two-night gig, told CBC Radio's Metro Morning on Tuesday.

Yanofsky's Toronto concerts come after the teen dazzled audiences at jazz festivals in Montreal, Toronto and abroad, and wonover fans like Wyclef Jean and Oliver Jones.

She's been likened to a pint-sized incarnation of the legendary Ella Fitzgerald whom Yanofsky calls her favourite singer and Aretha Franklin,twoartists whose work she has performed.

Singing "has always been a natural thing since birth!" an exuberant and fast-talking Yanofsky said Tuesday.

By the age of two, she explained, her parents had noticed she was always singing in tune and able to keep time by clapping her hands to music. The toddler soon graduated to regularly performing "talent shows" for her cousins and other family members, she said.

"It's fate that's making me do this. I'm so blessed to have this talent that I'd almost feel guilty not sharing it, you know, because it's something that I love to do. So why not let other people enjoy it as well?"

While she's most often presented as a child musical prodigy, "when people say 'You're good, for a kid,' it's almost insulting," Yanofsky said.

"[People] who hear me, hopefully, enjoy me whether I'm a kid or an adult," she said, adding that she is constantly working, practising and studyingto improve as an artist.

"I still have a lot to learn," Yanofsky declared.

"You can always keep on learning and I think that's what's also keeping me grounded. If you believe that you can grow as an artist and as a person, you're never gonna get a big head."

Following her sold-out performances Tuesday and Wednesday night at Toronto's Isabel Bader Theatre, Yanofsky will travel to New York for her Carnegie Hall debut on Friday.