Hayley Westenra

by Hayley Westenra

  I took the lyric and melody to 'Let Me Lie' to Sarah Class, who had worked on many of the arrangements on Pure. She's also a hippie chick, which is one of the reasons I bonded so well with her. We clicked because she's also a big fan of organic food, alternative therapies and healthy eating in general. Sarah helped me to take 'Let Me Lie' to the next level. We worked on it together, changing the pace of the song and the arrangement of the music. I found her guidance invaluable because, when you are just starting out, it takes a lot to complete a song and sometimes it's useful to have the input of somebody else.

  It remains very much my song with the lyric and melody all my own. Once I started writing, I needed to have a publishing company, so, if you look at Treasure closely, you'll notice that many of the songs are published by Aroha Music, aroha being one of my favourite words – it means 'love' in Maori.

  Another of the songs that I co-wrote on Treasure has a slightly more accidental origin to its name. 'Le Notte del Silenzio' is Italian for 'The Night of Silence'. However, the song was always intended to be called 'Le Note del Silenzio', which translates as 'The Note of Silence'. But somewhere along the way there was a spelling mistake and the new name stuck.

  Once it had appeared everywhere, we decided not to change it, to save even more confusion all round. I wrote it in London with a guy called Antonio Galbiati. We sat around a piano and worked together on it in a very organic way. I loved the creative process, which was a real fusion of Italy and New Zealand. Each time we worked out how a section of the song would sound, we recorded it into a Dictaphone. It remains one of my favourite tracks on the album, even though the name went wrong.

  It just goes to show how disorganised this industry is. It's totally dependent on people not making mistakes. Before I made my first record, I had always assumed that every CD that was produced was highly crafted and well thought out; now I think that some of the ones that do well succeed more through fluke than anything else. Quite often it's down to the efforts or decisions of one individual in the team. Albums that bomb can come down to one person making a few stupid mistakes.

  Just one wrong decision over release dates; the amount of money available to spend on marketing; the priorities within a record company; even whether the person who originally signed an artist has left the record company in the meantime – all of these can be reasons why otherwise strong albums fail completely. I've seen this happen to other artists so often that I do like to have a say in every part of the record-making process. On the odd occasion when I've handed over an element of control, I've always come to regret it later.

  I co-wrote the track 'Summer Rain' with Jeff Franzel, who had worked on the Il Divo tour. As we travelled around America, we would snatch opportunities to write together on our days off. Jeff would often ask, 'Shall we write tomorrow?' and I would agree, while thinking to myself, Bother, there go my shopping plans! or, I just want to sleep and rest my voice. It was a real battle to find time to do some writing and Jeff instilled some strong discipline into me. Otherwise, I might well have kept on procrastinating.

  The day that we wrote 'Summer Rain' was an especially good one, because not only did I write a song but I also had time to squeeze in some shopping for a pair of black boots, which was a bonus! I'm not usually that much of a shopper, but, while I was touring with Il Divo, I did enjoy getting out and about in each new city that we visited. I wrote the lyric for the song and then worked on the music with Jeff. Once we were happy with everything, Jeff took the track back home to New York and put it down as a demo, with computer-based instrumentation, so that we could play it to everyone. I particularly liked the pizzicato strings that we eventually worked into the introduction and the way that the strings acted in a percussive way all the way through.

  For 'Summer Rain', I wrote the entire lyric on my own and then Jeff and I worked jointly on the music. Creating a song with a co-writer like this is by far my preferred way of operating. I've found that, when I work with a co-writer on the words, it's a less satisfying process. There's no right or wrong way of writing lyrics and it's true to say that another writer can often come up with a great line, but I found that there was always a danger that the song wouldn't end up being what I had initially envisaged it as being. One new line can take the whole story of a song in a different direction.

  I suppose it's my controlling nature kicking in, but I find that at this point my interest in the song begins to lessen, I suppose because it's then less personal to me. This was not the case with 'Summer Rain' – it was a great partnership with Jeff that flowed really well, just as it had been when I worked with Antonio on 'Le Notte del Silenzio'.

  'Melancholy Interlude' is one of the more unusual tracks on the album. For a start, it lasts for just over a minute and a half. Secondly, it's based on a tune written by the English composer John Dowland, who was born almost five hundred years ago. I came across his piece 'Melancholy Galliard' on an album that I was listening to on my laptop late one night after a concert in Japan. It arrested my attention as soon as I heard it. The melody was very simple but very haunting, and its potential as the basis for a song just grabbed me instantly and I started to sketch out some words.

  Steve was just a few doors down from me in the hotel and I knew that he wouldn't be asleep because he always works on his emails until long into the night. I called him up in a state of high excitement.

  'Steve, guess what. I've just found a brilliant tune for the album and have some words to match!' I screeched at him down the phone.

  'OK, come down and play it to me,' he said.

  So I got dressed and walked down the corridor to his room. Once I had sung him through it, he said, 'Well, you'd better record it, so that it doesn't disappear from your mind.'

  We recorded a very rough demo on to his computer of this new version of the main theme to 'Melancholy Galliard'. It made it on to the album in a slightly shortened version from the original one that I recorded, but everyone agreed that it worked better like this – very much as an interlude between the main songs.

  Once I had selected all of the songs for Treasure, it was time to go into the studio again to record the album. This time, I worked with a great new producer, Nick Patrick, who also created a lot of the orchestral arrangements for the album. Nick is one of the most experienced producers of the contemporary classical sound. The orchestra was recorded out in Dublin and I laid down some of the vocal tracks there, with the rest of them being recorded at the studio in Nick's home near Salisbury. Initially, I was not too keen on travelling two hours out of London to make the album, but it helped me to have a really clear headspace and the scenery and countryside around Salisbury was lovely. We made the final part of the album in London, where I worked alongside a choir on one of the tracks.

  Since Treasure was released towards the beginning of 2007, I've continued to write songs. I'm trying to build up a collection of tracks that I could record myself or that could be recorded by another artist in the future, but singing remains at the centre of everything I do. There was no better reminder of this for me than when Treasure had its American launch at an Irish bar called Ulysses in New York. When I look back on that I night, I would count it as being among my favourite performances of all time.

  It was not a star-studded occasion, but instead I was able to sing alongside some fantastic musicians playing keyboards, guitar and violin. I had so much fun working with them. The owner of the bar was called Danny and it was his birthday on the night that I was there, so his whole family were there, including his wife and his little daughter, who was sitting on his lap. One of my final tracks was 'Danny Boy', which I dedicated to him. It was a very intimate venue and, as I sang, I could clearly see how much the song meant to him and his family. That simple emotional response to a song that I was singing made it a very special evening for me. The atmosphere was amazing and I could see that night how much my singing could touch people. I felt very honoured to have had that experience.

  When it came to launching T
reasure in the UK, it was accompanied by a press story that really seemed to capture the media's attention. It came about when I was at Steve's house practising my singing. I was worried that if I did it at my place I would disturb the neighbours.

  Steve has a lovely dog, brilliantly named Iggy Pup, who is trained not to bark. However, whenever I sing, he starts yelping. Initially, I took offence at this, remembering the effect that my singing had on Zac, my pet cockatiel, back home in Christchurch, who always used to go into a frenzy of squawking whenever I sang. Steve was very interested in the phenomenon and researched it. He discovered that I may have what is known as 'whistle tone'. This is nothing to do with singing beyond the range of human hearing. Instead, it's about having a certain timbre to your voice that animals pick up on. This is far more prevalent with the higher register of a girl's voice. It created quite a stir when the story appeared in The Times, and I'm still asked about it when I give interviews now.

  With the release of each of my albums, I sense that my fan base widens slightly. If I said that it was only one or two groups of people who buy my records and come to my concerts, then I would be missing out huge tranches of my audience. As well as my official website, www.hayley westenra.com, which is operated by Decca, some of my most loyal fans have got together to create an unofficial fansite at www.hayley-westenra-international.com. The team behind it are very dedicated and they often know more about my schedule than I do. Unfortunately, Keith Sheel and Simon Smalley, two of the leading lights of the site, have both passed away recently. When I get time, I scan the forums to gauge reaction to a particular song or performance. I know that this sounds crazy, but occasionally, if I have a concert coming up that I want to know more about, I log on to the site because I know that the webmasters will have done their research. So, if there's any doubt or confusion over a concert, I always check out what the site has to say.

  Most of the moderators on the fansite are UK-based and I always find a big group of HWI people waiting for me at the stage door after my British concert dates. They used to wear a blue sweatshirt with a yellow embroidered HAYLEY WESTENRA INTERNATIONAL logo on it. Things have moved a little more upmarket now, though, after one of my Scottish fans designed a Westenra tartan especially for me, which was very flattering. So, now the site members all arrive at my concerts sporting a subtle blue and red tartan tie. I keep thinking that one day, perhaps for when I'm performing in Scotland, I should have a kilt made in the Westenra tartan for me to wear on stage.

  Most of my fans are absolutely lovely. They tend to be very polite and respectful and I do appreciate it when people come up to me to say hello or to tell me that they have enjoyed one of my albums or concerts. But I'm afraid that I've also experienced a more unsavoury side to being in the public eye, which caused me a good few sleepless nights.

  I'm always happy to meet and chat to fans at the signings that are organised around tours or CD releases, but there were a couple of fans in Germany who caused my management and family a lot of concern and kept me on edge for quite some time. Although the two fans both happen to come from Germany, they are completely unrelated to each other.

  One started to send me weird fan mail with strange gifts and some sick letters. My management asked the relevant security people to keep an eye on him. He then began to turn up to signings and act weirdly, so security around me at these sorts of events had to be increased.

  To be honest, it feels very scary when someone gets that fanatical and when you know that mentally they are not right. You begin to ask yourself what they are capable of. Although I'm usually very level-headed and not prone to panic, I did find the thought of this terrifying.

  To an extent, I've been sheltered from some of the details of these kinds of incidents by my management, whom I trust implicitly to sort them out for me. I do know that there are periods when the security around me has to be tightened considerably to deal with the issue. I find that saddening more than anything else, because I know that the vast majority of my fans are wonderful people.

  The main incidents have involved another fan from Germany who came to the security people's attention when he began harassing audience members outside one of my concerts in London. He had travelled all the way from Germany and, in the end, he was arrested and the police took him away and put him on a train home. Somehow, he managed to make his way back to the concert hall. One of the musicians who were performing with me that night recognised him and alerted security. He was taken away again.

  The next incident came when I was performing with Il Divo in Berlin. I was walking into the wings at the end of my set when the same man jumped up on stage with a gift of some sort, calling my name and grabbing at me. Fortunately, we had a lot of security people at the side of the stage and he was bundled away very quickly.

  It was a shocking experience for me. When I'm up on stage, I consider it to be my space and there's always a line between me and the audience. It's the way I've always been used to things being. As I stand there with my musicians around me, I feel that the stage is a very safe environment on which I can perform without fear. After that horrible occasion, I began to find myself up on stage scanning the audience for the slightest movement. I would notice if somebody five rows back got up to go to the toilet, whereas previously I wouldn't have given it a second thought. It sent real Shockwaves through my system.

  It has had a negative effect on my career as well, after my management and record company decided that I would no longer tour or release records in Germany for the time being. Everybody at Decca was very understanding and caring towards me; it's one of the occasions when I understood how recording for one of the truly great international record companies is like becoming part of a family. Germany is the biggest classical-music market in Europe and it's frustrating that, as an artist, I simply can't work there at the moment. I'm sad for my genuine fans over there, but, even as I write these words right now, the thought of travelling there makes my stomach turn. It was a very frightening experience, although I'm afraid to say that it's an increasingly common problem for people – and particularly women – in the public eye.

  I realise that I'm not alone in facing the problem, but it makes it no easier when you are the victim of this sort of unwanted attention.

  CHAPTER 12

  TRAVELLING THE WORLD

  One of the great privileges of being an international recording artist, as opposed to one who works in only one country, is that I get to travel all over the world. Whenever I tour, I always learn a few phrases in the local dialect, such as 'Nice to meet you – I'm looking forward to working with you.' I also find out how to introduce myself and to say 'please' and 'thank you'.

  I always enjoy finding out about each of the different countries and I've become quite a connoisseur of the surprisingly varied cultural sensitivities in each area. I enjoy visiting places such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea. The culture is so different from what I'm used to either back home in Christchurch or in my adopted home in London. Although nearly all the people I meet speak excellent English, when they revert to their own language I enjoy being in my own little world without a clue as to what they are discussing. Giving interviews in a foreign language is a particularly easygoing experience. First the interviewer asks a question, then the translator translates it. I then answer in English and sit around for a couple of minutes while my answer is translated – and so it goes on, with these little gaps while I just sit there smiling. It's much less hard work than doing an interview in English.

  Japan is one of the countries that I've visited most often and I love going there. Japanese fans are more enthusiastic than those from any other nation on earth. They are extraordinarily warm and their generosity knows no bounds. There's a lot of gift giving throughout every trip and I've learned to come prepared with gifts of Kiwi soft toys, New Zealand chocolates and the like.

  I've always been intrigued by the Japanese culture and lifestyle. I've read a lot about the importance of the diet that the
y have there in increasing general levels of health and fitness throughout the population, especially when compared with parts of Europe and America.

  As you will have worked out by now, healthy eating is one of my particular fascinations, so I always try to embrace the culinary culture as well as other local customs while I'm there. That means that, every morning I'm in Japan, I always eat a full Japanese breakfast of grilled fish, miso soup, pickles and rice. I absolutely love it and find that it really sets me up for the day in a way that a croissant or a couple of pieces of toast would never do.

  However, one particular morning, I learned my lesson when it comes to being too adventurous in the food department. We always stayed in a hotel where there was a choice of a Western breakfast or a traditional Japanese breakfast. I always opted for the latter, but on the day in question I had been up very late performing and had slept in, missing the normal breakfast slots in the restaurant. During the rest of the morning, they offered a more limited menu, which was not quite as good as my normal fare. As I looked at the menu, I vowed that I would try to get up on time in future.

  Then I noticed that they were serving Japanese porridge. Now, I like my porridge as much as the next girl and I thought it might be an interesting proposition with a Japanese twist to it. It turned out to be the most revolting thing I've ever tasted before or since. If I had known what to expect, I might conceivably have gained more enjoyment from the meal, although I'm not entirely sure about that.