Hayley Westenra

by Hayley Westenra

  When I was at Fendalton Primary, I did quite well on my natural ability, as opposed to having to put in lots of hard work. My school reports often commented on my inability to hand in my homework on time. It was a constant theme and my problem was twofold. True, I would procrastinate a little, but I was also a perfectionist and I always wanted to get everything right. Some kids would rush their homework, saying, 'I don't really care, as long as it's done.' But I was the opposite. I never wanted to hand something in to the teacher that was not done to the best of my ability. I'm still that way today and I always want everything I do to be spot on. I hate the thought that I had the opportunity to do something better and I didn't take it.

  When I was seven years old, a family friend told Mum about some local auditions for The Sound of Music. She thought that I might be interested. Up until then, it had never occurred to me to develop an interest in musicals, but it seemed like a good idea. So, I went along to audition for the part of Marta. I remember hearing all of the other kids singing and knowing that I was better than they were. This might read as my being arrogant or big-headed, but I promise you that this was not the case. I was still a quiet, thoughtful child and I came to this conclusion in a very rational way rather than through arrogance. As I stood there at the auditions, I gradually began to realise that I was not only a good singer when I compared myself with the other children in my school, but I was actually doing pretty well when compared with the talent in the rest of Christchurch.

  It was at that point that I really grasped the idea that singing was 'my thing'. It made me even more focused and excited that I had discovered my calling. It gave me a sense of direction and I thought, Right, this is it – singing. I want to be a singer.

  Alongside the singing, I developed an interest in dancing and acting. My ballet teacher, when I was around the age of eight, was very encouraging. She told me that I had the perfect physique for a dancer: my body shape was right and I was good at the moves. But I was getting busier and busier, so in the end the dancing had to come second to the singing. There was a danger that I would be spreading myself too thinly. At one stage, later in my career, I had ambitions to be an all-round entertainer, a singer who branched into acting. But these days, that does not appeal at all. I'm more than happy to stick with my singing and my songwriting. Maybe in time I'll not only be singing and writing, but arranging too – which I have actually already started doing – as well as producing my albums. All these fields can work hand in hand, but I do think it's really important to stick to what you're good at, so I'll see how I go. Dancing is something that I would love to get back into as a hobby, but I obviously realise that I'm never going to be a professional. It's a great form of expression, though.

  I continued learning the violin and doing ballet right through until I was about fourteen. I did all the exams, but my singing started to get in the way, especially of the ballet. I had reached Grade Six and my teacher said, 'Just come to a couple of lessons a week.' But I felt that I was getting behind the class, so I decided, reluctantly, to give it up. The lessons were starting to seem like a hassle, especially when it was cold and we all had to stand there in our leotards learning how to plié (a knee-bending movement) correctly for hours on end.

  My extracurricular activities sometimes caused a problem at school. Rather than going down the more conservative route of doing singing lessons and taking structured exams, I was taking part in musicals and working on the fringes of professional theatre. Because of that, I would miss the odd class or take a day off school if I had been up late the previous night. And the teachers didn't always approve of my doing that sort of thing.

  After I had cut my teeth on stage singing 'The Littlest Star', if I was offered any opportunity whatsoever to sing or perform, I would take it. Talent Quest competitions are popular across New Zealand and it was probably inevitable that someone as keen on performing as I was would end up becoming a regular competitor.

  These competitions, which usually happen in shopping malls, are open to anyone: singers, dancers and musicians. You name it, they were there. As well as some fantastic talents, there were also those people who just wanted to get up on stage and have a go. Nobody minded if it was a dance that they had put together in their bedroom to Britney Spears's 'Hit Me Baby One More Time'. The important thing was that they were going for it.

  I entered these competitions with gusto. I loved the challenge of working my way through the heats and trying to reach the finals. It was a great opportunity to get out there and perform – and perhaps to show off a bit as well. One of my biggest tasks surrounding Talent Questing was to find backing music for the songs. My repertoire included 'Walking in the Air' from The Snowman, the Celine Dion track 'Because You Loved Me', Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Unexpected Song' and 'Time to Say Goodbye', which was made famous by Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman.

  I took the competitions very seriously, although I probably didn't practise as much as some of the contestants did. In particular, the dancers must have had to put in an amazing amount of hard work to perfect their routines. Things were going well at various Talent Quests, but one day it all went wrong in a contest at the South City shopping mall.

  I was singing 'Because You Love Me' and I walked on stage as normal, but I didn't hear the music starting, so I missed my cue. This threw me completely and I was not experienced enough to know how to recover. I panicked and my voice went off key for the rest of the performance. In truth, it was probably the wrong song for me to sing in the first place. The judges didn't like the performance one little bit and I failed to make it through to the finals.

  It was a good lesson for me because, up until that point, I had always expected to succeed. I was in floods of tears on the way home. It was my biggest performing failure and I felt so embarrassed. I vowed to myself that I was never going to sing ever again in the whole world. Despite everyone's best efforts, I was inconsolable.

  When we arrived home, I ran into my bedroom and hid between the side of my bed and my bedroom window, so that nobody could see me. Mum came and sat on my bed and tried to talk it through with me.

  'I don't want to talk about it!' I wailed. When things go wrong, I much prefer to shut myself off and come to terms with things on my own. As I look back on it now, it seems unthinkable that I would have even considered giving up singing, but at the time it was the end of the world.

  'I'm so embarrassed I messed up in front of all those people,' I sobbed to Mum. 'My reputation's ruined.'

  'Well, look,' she consoled me. 'You can give up if you want to. Or you can learn from it and keep carrying on.'

  Eventually, I came to my senses and used the whole experience as part of the learning curve that is necessary for any live performer. After that, we all used to sit down around the kitchen table following each of the Talent Quests to talk through what went right and what went wrong on each particular occasion.

  By now, Sophie was also involved in the Talent Quests as well, so they turned into a major family affair. The discussions in the car on the way home and over dinner around the kitchen table became longer and more detailed. We became experts on the judges' likes and dislikes and developed a keen eye for analysing our competitors' strengths and weaknesses too.

  My greatest Talent Quest triumph came at the Northlands Mall, near to my home. I was eleven years old and sang 'The Mists of Islay', a very beautiful and haunting folk song. It was an unusual choice for that sort of environment, where the latest pop hits are far more the order of the day. I guess I stood out because of that. I worked my way through the heats and into the final of the junior section, which I was delighted to win. Then I had to go up against the winner of the senior section to see which of us would be named overall champion. I couldn't believe it when the senior judge read out my name. Not only did I win NZ$1,750 for myself, I also earned my school a cheque for NZ$1,000.

  After I had performed, one of the judges went out and bought me a Kathleen Battle CD.

  'I think you co
uld sound like her if you keep going in the direction you're going in,' she told me as she handed over her gift.

  These days, I'm singing a lot of classical music, but back then my singing style was similar to that of any young girl. My voice was very natural and not at all classical, but, then again, by choosing a song such as 'The Mists of Islay', I was not positioning myself as a pop artist either. When I listened to the Kathleen Battle CD, I was very taken with her voice. She has a very pure, clean sound and her voice is extremely agile. I was very touched by the compliment that the lady had paid to me.

  The victory at Northlands Mall came just after I had completed my time at Fendalton Primary School and just before I was due to join Cobham Intermediate School. It meant that I was able to arrive at my new school with a cheque for a cool NZ$1,000.

  'Well, you know, we feel really bad about accepting this, because we haven't really done anything for it yet,' said my lovely principal, Trevor Beaton.

  'Don't worry, you will!' replied Mum with a smile.

  And she was right. I had a wonderful two years at the school. It was another very supportive place to learn. The teachers very quickly hooked into my love of music and I was given the lead role in the school play, Alice in Wonderland. I was so excited, not just because I had the opportunity to sing and act, but because I was actually playing the title part. Just recently, I visited the school again to open their new music suite, which I'm very honoured to have named after me.

  I remained quietly competitive as each of the Talent Quest competitions came along. I had been given a taste of winning and I really rather liked it.

  'You come across as so nice and sweet,' Mum told me one day. 'But people don't realise that you're really tough.'

  I don't think she meant 'tough' in a horrible way, but I was very focused and quietly determined to work my way up.

  Child stars are always asked, 'Were your parents pushy?' I can honestly reply that my parents never pushed me in any direction that I didn't already want to go in. Dad always tended to take a back seat in these things; Mum would always encourage us to practise our instruments and our singing, but she would never push us into doing it.

  I know that I would never have achieved everything that I've done today without my wonderful Mum. I knew from a very early age that I wanted to go on stage and that I wanted to be involved in musicals.

  About this time, she said to me, 'Hayley, you've just started intermediate school. You shouldn't be doing any more musicals. You should be concentrating on your schoolwork.'

  'Oh, I guess you're right,' I would grudgingly reply. But then I would hear about another set of auditions and 'Mum, can I just try out?' would come the plaintive request.

  Inevitably, I would then win the part. Mum always supported us wholeheartedly in anything we chose to do, and, once we had decided on something, she would make it happen to the best of her ability. For example, she used to spend hours helping me to sort out the backing music for the Talent Quests. Nowadays, it's a lot easier to locate music with the Internet being more advanced, but back then it was really tough. It was a struggle for all the singers in the competitions to get hold of good arrangements. Some kids would even resort to singing along to the original recording complete with the original vocals – something that just didn't work at all. These were the kids who were not lucky enough to have parents who spent time helping them, so, to my mind, it does pay to have a mum and a dad who want to be involved.

  But I think that, if they had pushed me, I would have probably resented it. If singing was not something that I had wanted to do, and they had forced me into it, I would have given up long before now.

  CHAPTER 4

  LEARNING MY CRAFT

  On a sunny weekend, you will generally find a couple of buskers performing in the Arts Centre area of Christ-church. A few others are usually milling around, awaiting their turn. I ended up becoming a busker by accident. It all began after I had joined the Canterbury Opera Children's Chorus, which is now known as Canterbury Opera Youth. A group of us were putting on a concert as part of the Festival of Romance at the Arts Centre.

  We had a lunch break after a busy morning of rehearsals, but a few of us didn't have any money with us to buy food. One of the gang pointed to a busker down the street and suggested that we go outside and try our luck as buskers to see if we could earn some cash. So, more as a joke than anything else, five or six of us went out on the street and sang some of the songs we had spent the morning rehearsing – songs from operas and operettas – quite high-end classical stuff.

  It went surprisingly well and, after we had given our performance with the Canterbury Opera Children's Chorus, one of the guys from the group turned to me and said, 'How about we do some more busking?'

  So we sang all of the songs we knew and things went very well on the money front. When Mum and Sophie came to pick me up, Sophie joined in and we ended up splitting the afternoon's takings three ways. We had each made enough to buy not just lunch that day, but for the next couple of weeks, had we wanted to.

  When I arrived home that evening, I got thinking, and my little business brain started ticking over. I realised that if I went out on my own to busk, I would be able to keep all of the money for myself. So, from then on, going out to sing became a regular weekend occurrence. True, earning some pocket money was a great motivator, but I also loved having the opportunity to perform. I found it a real challenge to see if I could manage to stop someone in their tracks and force them to listen to my voice; I found it a very satisfying experience to see the effect that I could have on them. There's a real sense of power from being able to do that with nothing except your voice.

  As I write this now, I'm beginning to realise that I'm probably a bit of a show-off when it comes to singing. But you have to be to do my job. It would be very odd to be a full-time professional singer and to hate the idea of performing in front of a crowd. The more I busked, the more I discovered that I liked the attention that my singing brought me.

  Soon, I decided to broaden my busking repertoire, by adding some tunes on my violin. I knew only a limited number of songs, so the instrumental pieces helped to pad out my set. I soon realised, though, that the crowds would disappear when I played the violin and reappear when I started to sing again. The violin swiftly became a former part of my act and I stuck to singing all the way through. There was nothing for it: I was simply going to have to learn some more songs.

  I had already mastered the songs I had learned as part of the opera chorus. Now, I added a few Andrew Lloyd Webber numbers as well, including the 'Pie Jesu' from his Requiem. Since then, I've sung that song so many times in so many different places around the world that I'm giving it a rest from my repertoire at the moment. For me, it will always be one of the songs I associate with my period of starting out on my career.

  Conversely, I still enjoy performing 'Pokarekare Ana', which has become my signature song. It has taken me all across the world and I've performed it for so many different people. It's a song that has stuck by me throughout and it's always a crowd pleaser. I regard it as being my trusty old faithful.

  When I started busking regularly, it was not really something that kids did in New Zealand. It was more for hippies doing their juggling and circus acts, or for music students in their twenties. The only youngsters out performing were the little violinists who had studied under the Suzuki method. There always seemed to be a lot of them, but there were no other kids out there singing regularly. Recently, I've noticed that there have been a far higher number of young buskers around the centre of Christchurch, so maybe it has become the 'in' thing to do over the past few years.

  The area in which I used to busk was in Christchurch's tourist heartland and there must be many people who visited the city around the turn of the millennium who have videos of some of my earliest public performances sitting gathering dust on their shelves at home. I think it's probably best for all of us if these 'gems' remain as part of their private collections!

>   Street crowds can be tough to work because they are not paying upfront to see you. There's no expectation on their part that you will be good and, as they have made no direct financial investment in your act, they don't automatically have a connection with you. You do have to hook them in – and I found that a real challenge. Having said that, though, I do miss the challenge. These days, I do a concert and everyone is paying money to see me perform, so there's a very real pressure on me to ensure that I give a good show. Everyone has an expectation of what I'm going to perform, how I'm going to sound and what the show is going to be like. When you are busking and you sing a bum note, everyone is far more forgiving because you are giving them a free concert anyway.

  I used to like to watch and interact with the audience and I would try to keep them listening for as long as I possibly could. If I could make someone who was out shopping stand in front of me and listen for half an hour, then that was a real achievement. Performing in front of crowds in the street is like taking part in a constantly changing popularity poll. If you do something that they don't like, they carry on with their lives and walk away. But, if they enjoy your act, then they hang around for more. At a paying concert, you don't get that sort of feedback. Nor would you sensibly want to provoke it, either!

  Over time, I earned enough money to buy myself a mini-amplifier and a microphone. It was a step up from how I started – just me and my unamplified a cappella voice, with a hat sitting on the ground in front of me to collect the money. I then started to bring along the family CD player to plug into my amplifier. Now, not only was I able to amplify my voice, but I could also sing along to a backing track, so my weekly outings on to the streets turned into quite a big production number. It allowed me to widen my repertoire still further. I did keep some a cappella songs in the mix, because they seemed to go down with the crowd, but singing with a backing track made my song choices far less limited than they had been previously.