celticladies

The three years since the release of Hayley Westenra's debut international album "Pure" have been a whirlwind. Along with her second album "Odyssey" she has achieved combined sales of over three million albums around the world making her a household name in many countries and breaking umpteen records along the way. 'Pure' is still the fastest-selling classical album in the history of the UK charts and Hayley is also the best-selling classical artist in Japan. Probably most important of all, 'Pure' is the best-selling album of all time in New Zealand. It also made the top 10 national pop charts in 11 countries. Even more significant is that the young soprano achieved all of this before her 19th birthday.

Despite all of this success, Hayley still remains the same unaffected down-to-earth girl from Christchurch, New Zealand (where her family from Monaghan travelled on a maiden voyage from Ireland in 1848). Even though she has an incredibly busy schedule, she still finds time to dedicate a great deal of energy to her role as the youngest Unicef Ambassador in the world. Her time in Ghana inspired her to initiate her own UNICEF "Bikes For Ghana" campaign.

She also has a deep interest in music therapy and is patron of the Raukaturi Music Therapy Centre in Auckland. The Centre uses the Nordoff Robbins method in using music as therapy for children with autism and other severe physical, intellectual and emotional disabilities. Hayley has appeared on both the BBC in the UK and CNN in the US with her own news features aimed at raising awareness in the benefits of music therapy. Coincidentally, in a recent survey on music therapy by a British Medical Journal, Hayley's voice was described as having the most "calming and therapeutic quality " of all music tested (including Mozart!).

She requires a quite different quality in her voice when she performs at any of the numerous sporting events around the World, which have included football (the FA Cup Final, in The Champions League for Celtic) baseball (the NBA in the US), Tennis (The Mercedes Cup in Los Angeles) and what is her proudest duty, singing the New Zealand anthem for her beloved All Blacks rugby team before their victories over the British Lions, Wales and England.

Hayley is in great demand as a duet partner and has sung with, among others, Jose Carreras, Bryn Terfel and Andrea Bocelli and recently toured with Il Divo. 

This is from www.celticwoman.com

If 16-year old singer Chloe Agnew ever writes a book she says that she'll call it 'From Carnegie Hall to Lunch Duty'. "That's the way that my life turns anyway," she laughs. "I played Carnegie Hall in New York one week with 'Celtic Woman' and the following week I was back at school on lunch duty, cleaning off tables and mopping the floor. But that's life. I'm so fortunate to have this wonderful opportunity and I love every minute of it."

Chloe may be young but she is already a musical veteran. Both of her parents, Adele ("Twink") King and David Agnew are successful performers and Chloe made her stage debut at 4 weeks old and sang on her mother's TV show at the age of 6. In 1998, she won the Grand Prix at the First International Children's Song Competition in Cairo, Egypt, representing Ireland with a song called "The Friendship Tree." Her big break came at the age of 11 when she approached Musical Director David Downes with the idea of recording a single for charity.

"It was shortly after September 11th and I saw an ad on TV for the children of Afghanistan and for the children in America who had lost their families," she remembers. "It really affected me and I remember thinking about it for weeks, just being moved and changed by it. I sat down with a friend to decide what we could do to help; you know do we have a sale or a lemonade stand? I knew that singing was the strongest thing I could do so I asked David if I could record a single with the profits going to charity. He took me into his studio and we recorded "This Holy Christmas Night", then Celtic Collections released it and I went on Ireland's biggest TV show and we raised over 20,000 pounds."