Hayley Westenra (10 page)

When I walked on stage, I was blown away by the huge response from the audience – and this was a group of people who didn't know me at all. The people were so lovely and the warmth of the welcome was very genuine, not least from Bryn Terfel himself. He is an incredibly nice man and is one of the greatest singers I've ever had the privilege to hear.

What amazed me the most was how at one moment he could be standing at the side of the stage in fits of laughter
at someone's joke, and then, within two seconds, walk on stage and sing magnificently in full character. I've never seen anyone to whom singing comes so easily. As I've got to know him better over the years since, I've warmed to his larger-than-life personality even more. He always takes time to ask about my family whenever I see him and I always ask him about his home in Wales.

One of the highlights of the day was rehearsing with Bryn and Jose
Carreras in a caravan that was parked around the back of the temporary stage that had been put up specifically for the festival. They made it great fun and there was probably more laughing than singing, if I'm totally honest. Walking out on stage with them later that evening was a magical moment. It sealed a very special relationship that I've enjoyed with the people of Wales ever since. I was thrilled to be invited to sing at the
International Eisteddfod in the summer of 2007. I always love going back there to perform.

The other significant event about Faenol was that it was the moment that I first met the man who was to become my manager,
Steve Abbott. Years after the event Steve (or Abbo, as he's known to his friends) confessed that he had been really nervous about meeting me. So much so, that he had been out and bought a whole lot of new shirts and a suit, thinking that, if he was going to be working in the classical-music world, he had better make himself look respectable. When I met him, I had no idea that he had made such an effort, so, when I was told, I was quite chuffed.

Steve had been brought to Faenol by a couple of the record-company people. I needed a full-time manager, because it was becoming too big a job for Mum and Dad to do on their own. Things didn't go completely in Steve's favour on the day. He had an umbrella sticking out from his bag and, as he walked along the side of the catering
marquee, it knocked all the wineglasses off a table on to the floor in one fell swoop. Not only was he trying to impress us, but he also wanted to leave a good impression in the minds of the record-company people. He must have wanted the earth to swallow him up.

Steve is not your typical manager. He amuses me enormously. He's a very hands-on manager and he doesn't just sit on his own in his office. Instead, he likes to get out on the road, as we found out shortly after Faenol when I sang at a series of concerts with Aled Jones. Steve used to pick me and Mum up at our flat, having stopped off at a health-food shop to buy vegetable pasties and muesli bars to fortify us on the journey. We would then hit the road with Steve at the wheel of a car that was definitely not at limousine standards of luxury!

He is very down to earth and that is one of the reasons we work so well together. He became part of the family; it was a big trust thing for Mum and Dad to hand over their daughter to a manager, but he's always worked very closely with them. He continued to consult with them and has had to work more closely with my family than other managers might have had to do, because I was so young. I suppose he's like an uncle to me.

As things have grown, so has the team at Steve's company,
Bedlam
Management. First, he worked with
Giselle Allier, who is now a showbiz lawyer. She's a very sweet and caring personality and we developed a very close relationship. When she left to practise law full-time, Kathryn Nash took over. Along with Steve, she's now my co-manager and, whereas Steve takes on an avuncular role, Kathryn is like a big sister to me. The other two members of the Bedlam team are
Nicola Goodall, who looks after the diaries and ensures that everything runs smoothly behind the scenes, and
Erica Sprigge, who has recently joined to run the concert agency part of Bedlam's activities.

I'm also very lucky to have been working, from the start of my time in the UK, with
Dickon Stainer and
Mark Wilkinson, the bosses of the UK arm of Universal, which is called Universal
Classics and Jazz, or UCJ for short. Although I'm signed to Decca, Dickon and Mark are responsible for selling and marketing my albums in the UK. They have always been incredibly supportive of what I do and, between them, they masterminded the most amazing campaign to launch
Pure.

At the end of the first day's sales, we were all shocked to discover just how effective Dickon and Mark had been, with the album sitting at number twelve in the pop charts. That meant that there was a very real chance that it could take the record for the best-selling first-week sales by a debut artist in the UK classical charts. The UCJ team flicked back through the history books and discovered that the record was held by none other than my old friend, Charlotte Church. I really wanted to wrestle the title from her grip.

I was aware that first-week sales were particularly important in the British marketplace, because, if you don't do well, then the record company and retailers quickly lose interest and you find yourself being dropped by the important shops. It's different in the USA, where the expectation is that you will gradually work your way up the charts.

Most of the interviews had been done in the run-up to the launch of the album, so my schedule was quieter in the week of the actual launch than it had been for weeks beforehand. On the Saturday of that first week, the final day that would make any difference to the initial sales, I was sitting in my flat twiddling my thumbs.

'I need to be doing something. I know it's going to be tight,' I said to Dad. 'I'd hate it to be just a few album sales that's the difference between my getting the first-week sales record and not.'

So, I hatched a plan to visit as many big record stores as I possibly could in central London and to offer to sign CDs, which I had been asked to do in the past on organised record-store visits. I travelled around to each of them on my own on the Tube. When I first walked into HMV in Covent Garden, I was halfway around the world from home and it gave me an incredible buzz to see a whole column of my albums facing me. Wow! This is so cool! I thought silently to myself. I stood there watching people pick them up. I tried mentally to send them messages saying, 'Buy it! Buy it! Buy it!'

If I discovered a store where the CD was not prominent enough, I would surreptitiously start moving CDs around on the shelves. By the time I had finished, it would sometimes remarkably be sitting at numbers one, two, three and four in the charts. Looking back on it now, I'm amazed that I didn't have a troop of store detectives following my every move. It was a little like a military operation and, once I had eyeballed the shelves, my next tactic was to sidle up to the counter and engage the shop assistant in conversation.

'I just happened to be passing the store,' I would say, my eyes wide with innocence. 'You've got some copies of my new album on the shelves over there and I wondered if you'd like me to sign some of them for you.'

The final part of the operation was for me to suggest that they play the album on the in-store PA system. When I had achieved all three of these objectives, I would move on to my next target, a few blocks down the road, leaving a bemused shop assistant in my wake. It was quite an effective campaign, but I want to assure you that it's something that I've never done since – and I don't have any intention of doing again in the future!

Over the preceding few months, I had been working with
Lisa Davies, who handled the booking of my television and radio interviews, as she does for a whole range of different
classical artists. The UK charts are published on Sunday lunchtimes and I was sitting with Dad in her garden when the call came through. She turned to me and said, 'You're number one in the classical charts and number eight in the pop charts – and you've broken the record.'

I was thrilled and we all drank a glass of champagne – something that I wouldn't usually have done at the time, but, if you can't have a glass of champagne when you've just broken the record for best-selling first week by a debut artist in the UK classical charts, then when
can
you?

We had seen the midweek charts, which are circulated around the record companies but not released to the public, and things had looked good. But I had been scared that the sales for my album might drop off at the weekend. I had been told that my pop-music competitors tended to do better at the end of the week because they had promotion from the television shows such as
Top of the Pops
and
CD: UK,
so I was concerned that I might be eclipsed by a pop act. I so much wanted the album to be successful because of all the hard work that everyone had put into it. This was crunch time.

For a moment, I thought that the pressure would be off after the strong first week's performance, but in fact it increased dramatically. I had been so focused on doing everything I could for it to be a good first week. Then I realised that I would have to redouble my efforts to ensure that
Pure
sustained its success. I carried on like a hamster in a wheel, going round and round doing promotional interviews and appearances. Whenever I had a day off, I would get stressed that I should be doing something. I was not happy to sit still and just take time out. Instead, I was willing to do anything for the album's success. I realise now that it makes me sound desperate, but in reality I was just extremely determined.

The international success spurred on sales of
Pure
in New Zealand. It really started to take off when my fellow Kiwis
heard how well it was doing abroad, with huge coverage in the New Zealand media. In the end,
Pure
went eighteen-times platinum back home.

It's funny, but sometimes we need someone else to give the nod of approval before we Kiwis accept something as cool. It can be quite hard for local bands to break, unless they have had an element of international success. I think we sometimes look abroad for a stamp of approval on our home-grown talent, which can occasionally be taken for granted.

After the success of
Pure
in the UK, I made brief visits to countries all over the world to promote the album. It was late in 2003, just after Dad and I had returned to our flat in London's Covent Garden. That same day, Dad took a call from Steve Abbott. I could hear only Dad's end of the conversation, but I could tell that he was excited about whatever it was that they had been talking about. When he put the phone down, he seemed almost reluctant to pass on the message, because he knew the effect it would have on me.

'Andrew Lloyd Webber wants to meet with you. You have an audition with him,' he said with a broad grin on his face. 'And the audition's tomorrow'.

It was this last part that worried Dad. He knew that I was already exhausted after a particularly arduous trip to Japan and, as we had only just arrived back in London, the jetlag was still to kick in.

'This is fantastic,' I said, hugging Dad. 'But couldn't he have given me a week's notice?'

Let me say right now that absolutely nobody is a bigger fan of Lord Lloyd-Webber's music than I am. From my very earliest days I've sung his songs. His music speaks volumes to me and even my earliest demo CD featured some of it. Even though it felt like an impossibility that I would be ready to audition for him in the morning, I knew that it was something that I had to do. That night, I had trouble sleeping, since not only was I full of nerves, I was also completely jetlagged. My mind was buzzing with questions about the following day. What would I be auditioning for? Would I manage to perform to the best of my ability? What should I sing? And what would happen if Andrew Lloyd Webber didn't like what he heard?

The offices of his company, the
Really Useful Group, were just around the corner from our flat in Covent Garden. As we headed towards the building's front door, I knew that I really wanted to wow him with my singing. I was even more excited when Steve told Dad and me that I was auditioning for something that was top-secret. He didn't have a clue what it might be for, but the people from the Really Useful Group had told him that it was very urgent that Lord Lloyd-Webber (as he has been since 1997) see me on this particular day, although they were very fuzzy in the details of why speed was so necessary.

The offices struck me as being very smart. I was shown through into the wooden-floored music room where a grand
piano was positioned in the corner. Dad and Steve waited outside in an office area. There was no sign of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Instead, I was greeted by his musical director. I was beginning to feel even more nervous and confused because at that time I had no idea who this man was.

'Let's sing through this piece here, then,' he said, passing me some music that I had never seen before: a new duet from the musical
The
Woman in White
called
'I Believe My Heart'.

I started to sing and, as I did so, all sorts of thoughts rushed through my mind. I was worried that the piece might be too high, too low, too this, too that – but it suited my voice well. I knew that I needed to look competent in front of Andrew Lloyd Webber and, because the piece was completely new to me, I had to read the music by sight as we went along. Andrew's colleague just played the accompaniment and let me carry the tune all by myself.

I thanked my lucky stars that Mum and Dad had encouraged me to learn the violin and piano, since this was exactly the sort of occasion when all of those hours of practice came in handy. It's funny how you do some things in life and then give them up, but you still utilise the skills that you have learned along the way.

I was feeling quietly confident that I was managing to hit the notes and then I heard this creak behind me and I just knew that it was Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Oh boy, oh boy! I thought to myself. I could see a high note coming. 'Hayley, you'd better get that note!' I told myself, all the time singing my way towards it. 'I've done it! I got the note!'

The pianist stopped playing and then Andrew Lloyd Webber shook my hand and introduced himself, although he needed to make absolutely no introduction to me, his biggest fan. He came across as quite a quiet and reserved man. He stood listening to me sing some more with his right-hand man accompanying me on piano.

'Well, everything they say about you is true,' he said. I smiled, silently hoping that whoever 'they' were had said good things about me. Then he decided that he wanted to sit down at the piano to take over playing. He complimented me on my voice and I began to feel slightly more relaxed as I seemed to have passed the test so far – although, since he didn't say too much, I was still not entirely certain where I stood.

'Have you sung much of my music?' he asked.

'Oh, yes, since I was very small,' I replied.

'What other songs of mine do you know?'

I suggested
'Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again' and immediately regretted it. A wave of panic swept through me. Would I remember all the words? After all, it had been a long time since I had sung the song. He started playing and it was incredible. I managed to remember the words, thank goodness. It was just amazing having him at the piano and suddenly the song became so much more meaningful to me for some reason. I could tell that he was listening carefully and, at one point, he became quite teary-eyed, although I never knew why.

'Beautiful,' he said. 'You can certainly sing.' He may not have said much, but what he did say was important to me. Those few positive words were very meaningful. Here I was, singing in front of one of my all-time musical heroes. I couldn't quite believe that it was happening to me.

'What about "Pie Jesu"?' he asked. I told him that this was among the songs of his that I performed most often. I sang it all the way through.

It was time to leave, and, as I said goodbye to Lord Lloyd-Webber, I got the idea that I had been given the job, although I still didn't know what the job was. I had already decided that I would do it, whatever it was, simply because Andrew Lloyd Webber was involved.

Shortly afterwards, Steve was told, in the utmost secrecy that I would be performing for the
Queen, President George
W Bush and Prime Minister
Tony Blair, after a dinner to be held at the American Ambassador's residence in Hyde Park. We knew that we had to keep my part in the concert completely quiet, so we developed our own code for talking about the event, describing it as 'the Barbecue', taking the letters BBQ from the words Blair, Bush and Queen. It meant that we could discuss the finer details of what was going on, without anybody else actually knowing what we were talking about.

The big day was during the following week and I spent the morning rehearsing at the Really Useful Group offices. My fellow performers included two singers from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical
Bombay Dreams,
who were going to sing
'How Many Stars'; an Irish singer,
Shonagh Daly; and
Kevin McKidd, with whom I was duetting on 'I Believe My Heart'. I also had a solo performance of 'Pie Jesu'.

I had spent a few days considering what I should wear for such an auspicious occasion and, in the end, I chose a dress designed by
Jenny Packham. She's a British designer whom I really like. She's become quite a big name recently. Her dresses were ideal for me, since they struck a perfect balance between being young and being classy. My choice for the 'Barbecue' was a lemon-coloured creation, with coloured beaded butterflies on it.

For security reasons, only Lord Lloyd-Webber, the musical director and the artists were allowed to travel to the American Ambassador's residence. I left Steve and Dad waiting in Covent Garden. We all piled into a big black van. It felt as if we were on some sort of secret mission, since we had secret-service guys with us talking into their cuffs. We felt very special, although everyone admitted that their levels of nervousness were beginning to outweigh the general air of excitement.

When we arrived at the gates, we drove through as many as six different checkpoints, with the van being checked
outside and inside, and each of the individuals being examined closely. Eventually we arrived at the inner gates to the house, where we were checked once again.

Of course, I had tons of luggage with me, as usual. I had wanted to be prepared, so I had packed my makeup, my hair stuff, a spare dress, spare shoes, a book to read and my laptop. It had not seemed an unreasonable amount when I had stuffed it all into my bag that morning, although now, as everyone else was forced to wait for the security guys to go through each item in detail, I realised that perhaps I might have travelled a little lighter.

After what seemed like an eternity, we were ushered into a small side room to get ourselves ready. I was really nervous by now. Along with the Queen,
George W Bush and Tony Blair were Prince
Philip, Prince Charles,
Condoleezza Rice and
Colin Powell, as well as a host of other British and American dignitaries. It was probably the most powerful collection of people that I would ever perform in front of in my life. But it was not they who worried me one little bit. There was only one person whose presence was making me nervous.

It was Andrew Lloyd Webber. You see, I was singing his songs and the last thing I wanted to do was to mess them up. I really wanted him to be impressed by me as a singer and I was far less worried about what George W Bush or Tony Blair thought. I reckoned that they would have other things on their minds and wouldn't be paying too much attention to the music. Andrew, on the other hand, would be listening to every note and would know instantly if anything went wrong.

My turn eventually came to walk in through the doors to perform in front of the dinner guests. There were around fifty people sitting there and the room was not really big enough to hold them all when you factor a piano and performers into the equation, so I found myself almost
brushing up against one of the guests. I was quaking in my shoes and it was quite possibly the most nervous I've ever felt before or since. The great man was there throughout, right in front of me, just to the left. I scanned the room, trying to remain focused on singing, but it's impossible to be so in such a small space and not to notice the Queen, Prince Philip and
Prince Charles.

I was trying my hardest to focus on the back wall, but it was very strange having all of these familiar faces staring back from such a close proximity. President Bush was leaning back on his chair looking relaxed. He is a very charismatic man with a big presence. He spent the whole time looking appreciative with a smile on his face.

I was worried about singing 'Pie Jesu', because it's a tough song with some pretty big vocal jumps in it. The key thing is not to form a complex about singing difficult songs. Once I've stumbled over a particular line, that stays with me for ever and I become paranoid about the song in question. But Tie Jesu' went fantastically for me on the night.

After everyone had sung their solo pieces and their duets, we all sang
'No Matter What', which I had never previously realised was an Andrew Lloyd Webber song. It first came on to my musical radar when it was performed by the boy band,
Boyzone. Mum will probably kill me for writing this, but she was a particularly big fan of theirs at the height of their fame.

Afterwards, we waited in a line to meet each of the dignitaries. I didn't know at the time that Condoleezza Rice was a highly proficient piano player. Had I done so, I would have worried even more, because performing in front of anyone who I know has a musical ear makes me nervous. We all had our picture taken with President Bush; he had his arm around me. He was very warm and appreciative to everyone. At the end he turned to me and said, 'Your performance really capped off the evening. Well done – you have a great voice.'

When Prince Charles came by, I reminded him that he had visited my primary school back home in Christchurch when I was six. 'Oh, really, did I?' he said, with a very genial smile. I reassured him that it was OK if he couldn't remember.

Funnily enough, I had met the Queen three times in a fairly short period. I had already sung for her at the
Royal Variety Show in Edinburgh, where I had performed a medley of 'Pokarekare Ana' (with Maori dancers) and 'Amazing Grace' (with bagpipes). Later in the week, I performed at the Remembrance Day concert at the
Royal Albert Hall in London.

In the line-up afterwards, she asked me, 'Didn't I see you earlier on this week?'

'Yes, ma'am,' I replied. 'And I'm going to be singing for you again in a few days' time.

At this point, I've a confession to make – something that I've never revealed before in any interview about this particular evening at the American Ambassador's place. I was determined to have a memento of the occasion and you will understand that I'm not entirely sure how a serviette embroidered with the little American Embassy symbol somehow came home with me in my bag. It's probably the naughtiest thing that I've ever done. Well, almost! When I visited the White House four years later, I was careful to ensure that I didn't repeat my misdemeanour. On this occasion, two sachets of sugar emblazoned with the presidential seal managed to find their way into my bag – one contained brown sugar and the other white. Can you believe they have their own sugar sachets?

As we got ready to leave the Hyde Park, I was still more concerned about what Andrew Lloyd Weber thought of my performance than about any of the other high-flying guests. I had not spoken to him at this stage and I was still holding my breath when we were whisked off to dinner at the Wolsey, one of London's smartest restaurants. Dad and
Steve met me at the door with a television crew from New Zealand who interviewed me about the evening. Dinner was all a bit of a blur for me. It was such an event and I was pretty relieved when it was all over. We were very well looked after in the restaurant, sitting at a table that overlooked the other diners – without question, the best seats in the place.

At the very end of the meal, Andrew Lloyd Webber came up to me and congratulated me on my performance. 'In fact, I'm going to write a song for you,' he said.

'Wow! Oh my gosh!' was all that I could stammer as a reply.