Hayley Westenra (3 page)

I always had a fascination with making things. In one way, I was a bit of a tomboy. Although I loved fairies and was utterly convinced that a group of them lived at the end of our garden, I definitely didn't like Barbie dolls. I loved using sticking tape, scissors and glue to create random bits and pieces that, back then, I thought needed to be created. I was a big fan of modelling clay and it was always top of my list of Christmas-present requests. When I get time even now, I still make some of my own jewellery. Whenever we went to the beach, I would pick up the shiniest or most interesting-looking shells and stones and would keep them in little collections in my bedroom.

Once, I even dug out a pond in our backyard. I used my toy spade to dig a hole, before lining it with a plastic sheet. I placed dirt around the top of the plastic to keep it in place and to hide it from view. Then I filled it with water. There were one or two design faults in my little pond and, very quickly, it ended up as a big pool of mud. But that didn't matter, because it was my pond. Mum and Dad had given me the freedom to make it all by myself.

One of my favourite movies as a child was
The
Secret Garden.
As soon as I watched it, I knew that I just had to have a secret garden all of my own. One of my friends helped me to cut a hole in a bush below my bedroom window among the shrubs. That allowed me to get into a tiny clearing about the size of a doormat that would become my secret garden. Or, at least, that was what we set out to do. Instead, we ended up hacking off half the bush, killing it in the process. I was in big trouble! I'm not sure that Mum has ever quite forgiven me. So, although we were given the freedom to be creative, there were definitely parameters. We knew where the line was and we knew when we had crossed it.

Some of my favourite memories of my entire childhood are of being in the backyard at home. Whether we were up in the tree house, hiding in the playhouse, climbing through the fence to next door, jumping on the trampoline or splashing around in the paddling pool, it was just a great existence. And I will always be indebted to Mum and Dad for that.

When I was growing up, I was constantly surrounded by music. Mum would play classical music to me when I was a baby, because she had read the research suggesting that listening to classical music can help a very young child's brain development. Later, as a youngster, due to my troubled sleeping, Mum and Dad bought me a collection of classical-music tapes to play in the background as a way of gently lulling me to sleep each night.

Those tapes were filled with classical favourites, such as Mozart's
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
and Tchaikovsky's ballets
Nutcracker
and
Swan Lake.

I can't remember my earliest performance, but I'm told that it happened when I was a flower girl at Auntie Carol's wedding. I was still a toddler, but apparently I sang a nonstop stream of Christmas carols right the way through the service. Singing to myself became more and more of a habit, but my parents didn't pick up on my voice as being in any way special. They just assumed that all kids sang the way I did.

When I was five years old, I went to
Fendalton Primary
School. To be honest with you, Fendalton is quite a posh area and our house's location made us borderline cases to be allowed to go there. Mum was never a typical Fendalton parent. There were a lot of students from very wealthy homes there and Mum was probably the only parent among them who would regularly go off to other school fairs to buy cheap clothes. She planned these buying trips with military precision, getting up at the crack of dawn and then arriving back home a few hours later with plastic bags full of clothes for each of us. During our childhoods, most of our clothes were second-hand because, although we were not what you would class as needy, there was never loads of cash to go around. That meant that Mum and Dad needed to budget very carefully. Without doubt, I've inherited that thriftiness and I'm still very conscious of not wasting money today.

Fendalton Primary was a lovely school at which to be a student. I was quite shy as a child, but it was my classroom teacher when I was six years old,
Lesley Compton, who noticed that I could sing. It goes to show what a good teacher she was, because, even though I didn't say much, she still homed in on the fact that this was the thing that I was good at, even though there were around thirty other children
vying for her attention every day. She gave me the solo in the Christmas school play, singing 'The
Littlest Star'.

Now, not only was I shy at school, but I didn't say that much at home at the time either. I've certainly made up for that since, but back then I was not the greatest communicator.

'I need to take my ballet gear to school today,' I told Mum on the morning of the big performance.

'Here you go,' she replied. Mum and Dad turned up to watch the school play that afternoon, as all conscientious parents would do. They sat down and got a huge shock when they opened up their programmes to read 'The Littlest Star – Hayley
Westenra'.

I really didn't understand that it was in any way a big deal. I was very calm about the performance and was not even the slightest bit worried. At that age, you tend not to realise that performing in public could possibly be frightening. I went on stage and sang my song faultlessly. The audience applauded very warmly and I beamed out from the stage at Mum and Dad. I couldn't understand why they seemed to have tears in their eyes.

At the end of the concert, Mrs Compton approached Mum and Dad and commented on my musical nature, suggesting that I should start learning a musical instrument. We went through the options. I didn't like the idea of learning something brassy and loud such as the trumpet one little bit, so in the end we settled on the violin, which makes a wonderfully melodic sound, a little like singing.

Music really became my thing at primary school and, although I was still shy, I was very driven in a quiet and understated sort of way. Even my family were sometimes quite surprised when I exhibited signs of steely determination. I do remember becoming frustrated that I suffered a little from 'tall-poppy syndrome' at school, where, as soon as one pupil started to shine at something, he or she would
be cut back down. I struggled to understand why I was sometimes not chosen for singing roles, when I knew, based on a rational judgement, that I had a better voice than those who
were
picked. When I look back on it now, I realise that I was frighteningly focused for someone who was still so small. I also noticed that the one exception to the 'tall-poppy syndrome' was sport. If you excelled at sport, that seemed to be nurtured to a greater extent.

I was never great at sport, but I always gave it a go. I played netball for a while. I was always the shortest in my class, so it was not the best option. On the athletics field, I hated the high jump and was terrified of this bar looming towards me as I ran up and took off.

For a short period, I tried karate because it was something that Dad and Sophie were keen on doing, but it was much more their kind of thing than mine. Dad was keen that we learn it for self-defence. Sophie was far more determined to work her way through the belts ahead of me. Being the younger sister, she's quite competitive with me in that respect. She was delighted when she became a yellow belt before I did.

If I had a sporting forte, it was on the cross-country running course. This is quite a solitary individual sport and it fitted my personality far better than a team game. Even now, I'm far happier working as a soloist than in an ensemble. There are good and bad points about being part of a group, but I feel that, if you work in a group situation, you can sometimes be swayed in the wrong direction by the views of others in the group. I much prefer having my own space; I like to be in control of my life and to be able to plan my days around what I want to do. Mum always gives me a hard time about it, saying, 'What happens when you meet a guy? Eventually, you'll have to compromise.' I'm sure that I will in the end. It's not that I'm stuck in my ways, but I do like to be in charge of my own life.

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.