Post by richnorri on Sept 30, 2006 7:54:40 GMT
Thanks to SteveM on Hayley Westenra's official forum, I have found this article in the Telegraph. It is a longer version of the article Drew posted from the Irish Independent.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/25/nsingers25.xml
Record label risks £1 million on high-flying schoolgirls who sing like angels
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
(Filed: 25/09/2006)
From left, Charlotte Ritchie, Laura Wright, Melanie Nakhla and Daisy Chute are the members of All Angels
Cynical, or just angelic? One of the world's biggest record labels is to spend more than £1 million marketing its latest manufactured ensemble, four public schoolgirls who have been given the name All Angels because, so it is said, they sing like seraphim.
With sales and recording contracts for the serious end of classical music close to collapse, the new line-up — like Opera Babes, The Choirboys and Il Divo before them — will be targeted at the populist classical crossover market.
There is, though, little manufactured about the girls themselves. The teenagers, who won through auditions, are already such high achievers that plenty of other careers beckon if the new musical enterprise proves short-lived.
Melanie Nakhla, 17, a pupil at Wycombe Abbey, is training as a pilot and plays tennis and netball at county level.
Charlotte Ritchie, 17, from James Allen's Girls School, London, is a veteran of the National Youth Music Theatre. She has acted on the Edinburgh Fringe several times, had a small part in one of the Harry Potter films and has played the lead in a short film with Martin Sheen and Cherie Lunghi.
Laura Wright, 16, a student at Framlingham College, Suffolk, is the reigning BBC Radio 2 Young Chorister of the Year, represents her county in hockey, athletics and javelin, reached the national schools tennis finals and is a lance corporal in her school's Combined Cadet Force.
Daisy Chute, 17, who recently moved from Loretto, Edinburgh, to the Purcell School in Hertfordshire, already has a professional role under her belt. Aged nine, she was chosen to play Cosette in the British touring production of Les Miserables. She, too, has appeared on the Edinburgh Fringe and aged 15 she hired professional session men and spent £5,000 to make a solo jazz CD.
She has appeared in several television and radio plays, is the youngest singer to appear on Humphrey Lyttelton's BBC Radio 2 show and has worked as a reporter on the BBC Newsround programme.
Steve Abbott, their producer/ manager who expects their first album to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, said: "What is a manufactured group? I don't think you have to justify this sort of music.
"When you hear them sing together it answers every criticism that is levelled at an act like this. This sound is sublime."
Abbott, who also created The Choirboys and manages Nicola Benedetti, the British violin prodigy, secured a five-album deal for the quartet with Universal Music.
The first album is to be released in November and its mix of classical and pop standards will be familiar fare for the crossover audience. There will be new arrangements of such staples as Franz Schubert's Ave Maria and the Flower Duet from Delibes' Lakmé, along with Robbie Williams's Angels, Fleetwood Mac's Songbird and Carole King's You've Got A Friend.
The decline of serious music teaching in schools means that crossover releases are often the only way people get to hear classical music, says Abbott. "I was a purist once and then I saw the light when record sales started to fall. There is no room for snobbery. Crossover is music after all."
The four Angels will be heavily promoted on radio and television. But they have different views of their futures.
Melanie, who is head of the Wycombe Abbey choir and almost missed her first audition because she was late back from a flying lesson, says that she will always sing "as a hobby" but plans to study French and Spanish at university. She says: "I suppose that if this goes really well we could be together for a lot longer than we thought."
Daisy Chute has set her sights on a career as a singer and composer and has applied to the Guildhall music school in London to do a degree.
She said: "I hope All Angels lasts because I think that we have a lot to give. You could say it's manufactured but I don't think that's a bad thing. We make very good music together."
Richard
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/25/nsingers25.xml
Record label risks £1 million on high-flying schoolgirls who sing like angels
By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
(Filed: 25/09/2006)
From left, Charlotte Ritchie, Laura Wright, Melanie Nakhla and Daisy Chute are the members of All Angels
Cynical, or just angelic? One of the world's biggest record labels is to spend more than £1 million marketing its latest manufactured ensemble, four public schoolgirls who have been given the name All Angels because, so it is said, they sing like seraphim.
With sales and recording contracts for the serious end of classical music close to collapse, the new line-up — like Opera Babes, The Choirboys and Il Divo before them — will be targeted at the populist classical crossover market.
There is, though, little manufactured about the girls themselves. The teenagers, who won through auditions, are already such high achievers that plenty of other careers beckon if the new musical enterprise proves short-lived.
Melanie Nakhla, 17, a pupil at Wycombe Abbey, is training as a pilot and plays tennis and netball at county level.
Charlotte Ritchie, 17, from James Allen's Girls School, London, is a veteran of the National Youth Music Theatre. She has acted on the Edinburgh Fringe several times, had a small part in one of the Harry Potter films and has played the lead in a short film with Martin Sheen and Cherie Lunghi.
Laura Wright, 16, a student at Framlingham College, Suffolk, is the reigning BBC Radio 2 Young Chorister of the Year, represents her county in hockey, athletics and javelin, reached the national schools tennis finals and is a lance corporal in her school's Combined Cadet Force.
Daisy Chute, 17, who recently moved from Loretto, Edinburgh, to the Purcell School in Hertfordshire, already has a professional role under her belt. Aged nine, she was chosen to play Cosette in the British touring production of Les Miserables. She, too, has appeared on the Edinburgh Fringe and aged 15 she hired professional session men and spent £5,000 to make a solo jazz CD.
She has appeared in several television and radio plays, is the youngest singer to appear on Humphrey Lyttelton's BBC Radio 2 show and has worked as a reporter on the BBC Newsround programme.
Steve Abbott, their producer/ manager who expects their first album to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, said: "What is a manufactured group? I don't think you have to justify this sort of music.
"When you hear them sing together it answers every criticism that is levelled at an act like this. This sound is sublime."
Abbott, who also created The Choirboys and manages Nicola Benedetti, the British violin prodigy, secured a five-album deal for the quartet with Universal Music.
The first album is to be released in November and its mix of classical and pop standards will be familiar fare for the crossover audience. There will be new arrangements of such staples as Franz Schubert's Ave Maria and the Flower Duet from Delibes' Lakmé, along with Robbie Williams's Angels, Fleetwood Mac's Songbird and Carole King's You've Got A Friend.
The decline of serious music teaching in schools means that crossover releases are often the only way people get to hear classical music, says Abbott. "I was a purist once and then I saw the light when record sales started to fall. There is no room for snobbery. Crossover is music after all."
The four Angels will be heavily promoted on radio and television. But they have different views of their futures.
Melanie, who is head of the Wycombe Abbey choir and almost missed her first audition because she was late back from a flying lesson, says that she will always sing "as a hobby" but plans to study French and Spanish at university. She says: "I suppose that if this goes really well we could be together for a lot longer than we thought."
Daisy Chute has set her sights on a career as a singer and composer and has applied to the Guildhall music school in London to do a degree.
She said: "I hope All Angels lasts because I think that we have a lot to give. You could say it's manufactured but I don't think that's a bad thing. We make very good music together."
Richard
