WORCESTER— Precocious
18-year-old New Zealander Hayley Westenra’s
remarkable musical odyssey brought her
to Mechanics Hall for the first time
last night, where she put on an absorbing,
often haunting and always enjoyable display
of her vocal talents.
Westenra could be said to have already
conquered her native country, Great Britain,
and a few other countries as well. But
although she hasn’t yet
cornered the United States market, she
is clearly on her way.
And last night’s concert — presented by Music Worcester Inc. — showed
a singer well on her way to impressive
mastery of all the music she wants to
convey with her voice. The odyssey will
continue, one hopes, and it would be
wonderful to find her in Mechanics Hall
again in a couple of years to see where
her musical journey has taken her.
The 18-number performance (which included
one encore and four instrumentals by
accompanying pianist Jeff Franzel and
guitarist Askold Buk) covered a wide
range of styles — classical, operatic, folk, Maori and pop. Westenra
seemed at home with each, although she particularly registered with such Celtic
gems as “Mists of Islay” and “She
Moves Through the Fair.”
The majority of the selections were from
her latest (and second) major international
CD, which is titled, appropriately enough, “Odyssey.”
Westenra’s voice has a soprano pureness as well as a richness that sometimes
belies her young years. It’s a
voice all her own, with great control
and tremendous command of the upper register,
but you could be forgiven for thinking
about such singers as Enya and Judy Collins
and wonder when or whether it will be
safe to make comparisons.
Westenra invited that judgment to some
extent by singing Joni Mitchell’s “Both
Sides Now” which was also famously covered by Collins. Westenra did all
the right things, singing the moody piece note perfect and with plenty of feeling.
But one suspects both Mitchell and Collins had seen a little more of both sides
when they recorded the song than the occasionally vulnerable looking 18-year-old.
But could either of them — or anybody else, for that matter — offer “Ave
Maria” in the haunting and perfect
pitched manner Westenra sang the piece
last night?
Looking beautiful in a blue dress, Westenra
was a bright and cheery host, talking
to the audience between songs. Her opening
song was a Maori love song from New Zealand, “Pokarekare Ana” that
almost had a poignant Celtic quality
to it. Some of the more plainly commercial
pop songs were rather unremarkable as
compositions, but Westenra musically
extracted the very best that could have
been hoped for.
Hers is a voice that can move in an up
tempo groove as well as atmospherically
lament. A marvelous example of the former
was a wonderfully rolling traditional
number called “The Mummer’s
Dance.” Another
Maori haunting song closed the official
part of the concert and a close-to-full-house
of 1,200 people gave Westenra a standing
ovation.
