Haley Westenra Sings on André Rieu's New CD!

Haley Westenra Sings 'Dreaming of New Zealand' 

On André Rieu's New CD "And The Waltz Goes On"

Translation from Elke Bliefering's 'Rieu~Treff' ... If you look at Andre Rieu's web site, at the track listing of his new CD, and you were able to listen to the excerpts of the songs, you may have noticed two things: One song track is on the CD twice, once as an instrumental version and the other at the end of the track listing with a vocalist. The track in question, "Dreaming of New Zealand". The music was composed by André himself, and as a vocalist he selected the young Hayley Westenra, a singer with an amazing voice! Renate, had googled her and found videos of Hayley and forwarded me the following link: ► Click HERE To The Link . I was thrilled, and spent some time on youtube, watching more videos of this young singer. And of course I wanted to know who this singer with the great voice actually was.

Hayley Dee Westenra (born April 10, 1987) is a singer from Christchurch, New Zealand, with Irish and Dutch roots. Currently she lives mostly in London. Her parents Jill and Gerald Westenra have two younger children, Sophie and Isaac.There is quite a musical background in their family. Her grandmother Shirley Ireland was a singer and her grandfather a pianist. At an early age of six, Hayley appeared on stage the first time. She sang the lead role in a musical nativity play. A teacher advised her mother Jill, that Hayley should learn to play an instrument in order to advance her talent. Soon afterwards she learned to read music, play the violin, piano, guitar and recorder. At age 11 she had already participated in over 40 stage productions, sung on TV shows and had appeared in major concerts.

In 2000, at the age of 12, Westenra recorded her first CD. Followed by additional recording contracts, which made Hayley first in New Zealand known and famous and then later on internationally. In 2003 her first international album "Pure" was released. "Pure" was the best-selling debut album in the history of the "UK Classical Charts." In New Zealand "Pure" became 12-times platinum. With that, Hayley Westenra holds the sales record in the history of the country, regardless of genre.

Hayley has received several international awards and on 5 September 2006 was the first New Zealander to be awarded as one of the ten outstanding young people in the world, the Junior Chamber International award.

In August 2006, Hayley Westenra was a member of Celtic Woman. ► You can see them singing HERE . In June 2007 she and the group toured the U.S. where they were scheduled to perform in 88 venues across the country. When the tour ended, they went their separate ways.

Her latest album is called "Paradiso" and was released in England in August and will be released in the US in October ... Below are some links on Haley.

► Haley Westenra Website 
► Haley Westenra on Wikipedia
► Haley Singing Pokarekare Ana on Youtube

Our Thanks to Elke for letting John translate this from her German Fansite