cover story

When I first interviewed Hayley Westenra eight years ago, she was 17 years old, on the cusp of international fame and gaspy in an Anna-Paquin-Oscar-speech way. She had recently met her idol, , and was releasing Pure, her first international studio album. (It went straight to No. 1 in the UK classical charts, and became the fastest-selling classical debut album.) The next year, she would move to and sing for the Queen, and George W. Bush. The year after that she would duet with Bocelli, and have her first stalker. We met again in September at a café in the leafy, posh West London neighbourhood where she now lives. She looks just the same – long, skinny legs, groomed hair, flawless skin, sweet face. This year marks a decade in the music industry for Westenra. To celebrate, and to promote her new album Paradiso (her tenth), she is doing a nationwide New Zealand tour, with a proportion of proceeds going to the earthquake fund. Paradiso is a collaboration with celebrated Italian composer . As well as writing two new pieces for Westenra, Morricone created new arrangements of his works, and allowed her to contribute new English lyrics for some of his most famous scores, including “Gabriel’s Oboe” (the theme from the 1986 film The Mission). He conducted each session with his 120-piece orchestra and produced all of Westenra’s vocal performances. This is extraordinary because Morricone doesn’t write arrangements for singers any more. But, as he explains in a behind-the-scenes clip, he decided to make an exception. “I heard her sing for a whole morning and I really liked her... It’s very emotional because she is a great with an extraordinary voice.” Westenra wasn’t expecting Morricone to take such an active role in making the album but says, “He’d come into the vocal booth with me, and he’d be pointing his finger at me throughout takes and when I thought I’d given my all, he’d send me back in. He was right, I could ON a give more… It was incredible.” If Morricone could speak English, she says, he didn’t let on. But between her basic Italian and the recording engineer who could translate, they were able to communicate. And if you have a creative disagreement high with the Maestro? Westenra titters. “Yeah, ah, you wait for him to leave the room and then you discuss it with the recording engineer who has been working with him for 20 years… I don’t think I would have dared to disagree too much with him, anyway. I trusted him to noHayley Westenrate has come a long way since know what was best for his music.” she was busking on the streets of Christchurch. Felicity Monk talked to her about her ups Born and raised in Christchurch, Westenra, according to and downs and her recent collaboration with the mum Jill, was a sweet, self-contained, shy child, so shy celebrated Ennio Morricone that she had to be repeatedly prompted to say “good morning” to her kindergarten teacher, and when she

16  sunday 13 NOVEMBER 2011 finally did, it was barely a whisper. Westenra was always singing, though. “I remember her looking at and saying, ‘I can do that,’” Jill recalls. “I’m not sure that she thought of it as a job, but she was confident that she could sing.” It wasn’t until Jill saw Hayley perform at a primary school Christmas production that she realised how talented her daughter was. (Westenra hadn’t told her Mum that she had the lead role.) Westenra took up the violin, piano and recorder, and learned to read music. By 11, she had sung on TV shows, performed in a number of concerts and appeared in more than 40 stage productions. In the weekends, she would busk on the streets, sometimes joined by younger sister Sophie and brother Isaac. At 12, she made her first recording in a professional studio, which was followed by a record deal with Universal Music New Zealand. Up until that point, apart from a few singing lessons, Westenra had virtually no formal training, until Dame offered her lessons. While still at Burnside High, the release of Pure propelled her onto the world stage. It reached Top 10 pop charts in 11 countries and holds the record for the best-selling classical album of the 21st century, ahead of Pavarotti, Charlotte Church and Andrea Bocelli. It’s the best selling album of all time in New Zealand – it charted for 18 weeks and went platinum 12 times. What do you do after that? At 17 years old, Westenra became UNICEF’s youngest ever ambassador (recently surpassed by ) and, at 20, released an autobiography, Hayley Westenra: In Her Own Voice.

Earlier this year, Westenra told two London newspapers about a “breakdown” in 2009. “It got to the point where I was ready to give up the industry, show business and everything I’d ever wanted,” she told the Daily Mail. “I didn’t want to even go out, let alone perform… I’d lie in bed all night but couldn’t sleep. I had to go to the doctor for sleeping tablets. I stopped washing my hair and wearing make-up and lived in an oversized hoodie and tracksuit bottoms. I sat around watching Coronation Street and chat shows. I felt very depressed.” She had become obsessed with food and controlling her diet, she told the paper. “The more weight I lost, the more weight I wanted to lose… Everything in life was beyond my control, including my ridiculously busy schedule. My diet was the only thing I could control.” In a similar interview in the Telegraph, she framed this behaviour as self-sabotage. “It was as if I didn’t want to get better, I didn’t want to be able to perform. I became self-destructive and it was a vicious cycle. You’re tired, you eat really bad food, you feel worse, then you eat more. I wasn’t sleeping.” When I ask about all of this, her manager, who is sitting in on the interview, perks up like a meerkat. »

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“My dream is to be a singer and to be up on stage. I don’t dream about seeing myself in the papers. But to get your music out there, you do need to talk about yourself”

Westenra’s schedule is now manic again. The day after singing the national anthem at the final, she performed at the International Rugby Board Awards in Auckland, then flew to Christchurch briefly to see her family, before a quick visit to Taiwan to do publicity for a tour in December. From Taiwan, she would fly back to the UK, before returning to New Zealand to begin her Paradiso tour on Tuesday. Since the “breakdown” articles ran, Westenra seems to guard her privacy more carefully. Besides downplaying her difficult time, she doesn’t once mention a French sound engineer boyfriend who she has been with since 2009. A friend describes Westenra as “very thoughtful, humble, modest and [she] seems to be pretty unfazed by the life she lives, when I think others sometimes change.” Unlike and Charlotte Church, singers to whom Westenra is often compared, and who have both made plenty of headlines – Jenkins for drug use as a student and Church for her drama- filled romantic life – Westenra’s image has remained squeaky clean. “My dream is to be a singer and to be up on stage,” Westenra says. “I don’t dream about seeing myself in the newspapers. But in order to get your music out there, you do need to talk about yourself.” She has only been photographed by paparazzi a couple of times. “It caught me off-guard a bit,” she says. “I went into a clothes store and just hid. But generally I feel like I am able to live my life fairly anonymously...” To interpret Westenra’s unobtrusiveness as timidity would be misguided though. After a concert in 2004, attended by George W. Bush, she planned to “To be honest with you,” says Westenra, “things did get go back and I don’t have to do it ever again.’ Because buttonhole him about America’s refusal to sign the sensationalised a little. It was kind of, um, I had a low every other year that she’s come home, she is half Kyoto Protocol. period. But we all do…. It was tough being away from unwinding but half thinking about new music she has to “I get to meet these important people and I am my family and I think that’s kind of been the struggle, prepare, still sort of in work mode.” always very polite and I don’t say anything,” she says. really. You can’t just go home when you feel like you When Westenra was last in New Zealand, Jill says “I am pretty much a mute. But it was something that need a hug. they walked past a luggage shop. “She paused [and I was feeling really strongly about at the time and I was “I reached a point where I was just being too strict said], ‘Oh, I need a new suitcase.’ like, I have to grab this opportunity to put in my two- on myself, like many girls go through, and I didn’t have “I said, ‘Hayley, you don’t need that because you are cents worth.” my mum around to put a home-cooked meal in front not going back. You are staying here.’ In the end, she never got the chance. Bush was of me.” “She said, ‘Thanks Mum.’ It was the only way for her bustled off quickly due to a security threat. Jill agrees her daughter needed a break. Two friends to totally and utterly relax and only when you really, “I was like, ‘Oh, was that me?’ They got wind of my had died in separate car accidents. She had contracted really relax can you get better – and that’s all she plans,” she says, laughing. “It was a bit frustrating… bronchitis and was exhausted from an intense and needed, a decent break. It didn’t take long and she I had psyched myself up. Never mind the performance, relentless schedule. “Hayley said to me, in order to said, ‘I’ve got the fire back in my belly and I really want all I was thinking about was what I was going to say completely unwind, ‘I need to feel that I don’t have to to go back to it.’” to him.” ★

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