He was a find at first sight, a rising star at first falsetto flight, and, while the world recognized the former backup singer's exceptional gifts the instant his pipes penetrated the troposphere on MTV's "Unplugged" last March, still nobody really knows Trey Lorenz. So Mariah Carey figures it's time we were all properly introduced.

"Everybody kept asking, |Who's the guy singing?'" says Carey, swiveling giddily on a stool in the control room at Manhattan's Right Track Studios. She is describing the since oft-retelecast moment during the live "Unplugged" taping at Kaufman Astoria Studios when Lorenz cut loose on the "Jermaine part" of her cover of the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There." Fact is, Lorenz's aerial larynx acrobatics at the bridge of the vintage R&B classic proved the most crowd-pleasing eruption of vocal yearning since Carey's own high-pitched exploits on her May 1990 "Vision Of Love" debut.

"I really didn't want all the fun and interest behind him with the |I'll Be There' record to go to waste," Carey continues, nodding to the gangly, grinning Lorenz, who's seated opposite her, "so we just went at it for about three months, worked really hard and made this." She flicks the mixing console faders forward to near-maximum volume level, while the tape begins to roll for "Someone To Hold," the kickoff single (written by Carey, Lorenz, and Walter Afanasieff) from the forthcoming self-titled Epic album, "Trey Lorenz."

What spills from the mixing-room monitors is a supple soul-pop soprano, feathery but vibrantly flexible, that's been framed in a buoyant vocal arrangement by Carey. Sailing across a glistening tide-pool of descants from Mariah, Will Downing, Audrey Wheeler, and Cindy Mizelle, Lorenz's dusky-to-dulcet vocal lead is a decisive devotional oath, seemingly capable of any sort of coloration, yet never flaunting its myriad strengths. On a ballad this straightforward, the danger would...