Wednesday
May 10, 2000 - Western Mail , Echo
Glamorous new image for Charlotte
Karen
Price
Western Mail
10/05/2000
WHEN Charlotte
Church collected her gold statue for Best British Artist at
the first Classical Brit Awards, she looked radiant in a
purple sleeveless top and contrasting cerise skirt.
With her long tousled hair and immaculately made-up face,
Charlotte looked every inch the international celebrity she
has become.
Her appearance at the Royal Albert Hall in London
highlighted the rather dramatic image-change the teenage
soprano has undergone in the 18 months since she shot to
fame.
She first appeared on our TV screens as a fresh-faced
12-year-old, and it was that innocent schoolgirl appeal
which helped millions of copies of her debut album, Voice
of an Angel, to sell throughout the world.
Now, although still only 14 years old, Cardiff-born
Charlotte has been transformed into a glamorous young woman.
Unlike child stars before her, such as Bonnie Langford
and Shirley Temple, she already seems to be shaking off her
child-like image.
She has ditched the cute plaits for a layered hairstyle,
and her pretty face, which was once free of make-up, is now
usually made up with coloured eyeshadow and dark red
lipstick.
With her new sexy appearance, she could be mistaken for a
17-year-old and, not surprisingly, it has led to a flood of
e-mails from young male admirers.
But they have not all been innocent messages of
adoration. Her former manager, Jonathan Shalit, revealed
that one message sent to her Web site was an “unpleasant
e-mail of a sexual nature.”
After winning her Classical Brit award, Charlotte
immediately announced that she was not going to become the
next Britney Spears by carving out a pop career.
But it looks as though she could soon be giving the
American songstress a run for her money in the sexy image
stakes.
Although Charlotte’s image as an angelic schoolgirl
with a remarkable voice undoubtedly attracted the majority
of her fans in the first place, the question is - will they
remain faith-ful to her as she continues to mature?
PR guru Max Clifford believes they will.
“It’s a very important time in her career. The
novelty has had its full exposure,” he said.
“She has an amazing voice for someone so young and now
people are accustomed to that. Now she has to develop into a
personality.
“At 14, she is doing all the kinds of things any girl
of 14 would do - becoming more fashion-conscious and
clothes-conscious.
“I think these days, 14 or 15-year-old kids are very
grown-up, probably far too grown-up, but that’s how it is.
She can’t stay 11 or 12 forever.
“Cliff Richard has reinvented himself in a subtle
manner and that’s why he’s so popular today.
“I think Charlotte will need to adjust her image and
occasionally re-vamp herself during the next 10 years, but
it must be natural.
“It appears she’s doing what comes naturally to her,
rather than jumping on the bandwagon and trying to be
something she’s not.”
Mr Clifford said that, as Charlotte matured, her fans
would continue to support her, as long as she retained her
down-to-earth nature.
“What little I have seen of her, she comes across very
well, natural,” he said. “That’s the most important
landmark when engineering an image.
“She is someone who is obviously enjoying her success
and does not come across as spoilt.
“The talent is there for everyone to see. She seems to
have a nice nature and personality and if she can continue
down that vein, it’s the best combination to endear
yourself to the British public. We don’t go for arrogance
or brashness.”
A spokeswoman for Charlotte’s record company, Sony,
said the singer’s fans were growing with her.
“Charlotte’s 14 now and loves clothes,” she said.
“She’s developing a great sense of style, which we
saw at the Classical Brits. We are watching her mature.
“I think Charlotte’s fans have become very fond of
her as a person, not just the way she looks. She has a
lovely bubbly personality and that’s what people go for
now.”
Charlotte herself, who is already a multi-millionaire, is
currently working on her third classical album and is not
worrying about the future.
“I’ll worry about what I’m going to do when I’m
20,” she said recently.
Landmark events in an impressive young career
CHARLOTTE Church was launched to fame in 1998 by Jonathan
Shalit. He became her manager after he saw her singing on a
TV talent show.
Monday
May 8, 2000 - Western Mail , Echo
Welsh Triumph At Classical Brit
Awards
Darren Waters
TWO winners, a male voice choir, Cwm Rhondda and a
chorus of “oggi, oggi, oggi” from the triumphant Bryn
Terfel left little doubt that the inaugural Classical Brit
Awards were a Welsh affair.
Terfel was
honoured as Best Male and Charlotte Church won Best British
artist, increasing further Wales’s reputation as the land
of song.
“We sing
in the bath, we sing in the pub and at the rugby. Scratch a
Welsh man and he will sing for you,” said Terfel.
The
patriotic bass baritone added, “To be born Welsh is to be
born not with a silver spoon in your mouth but with music in
your heart and poetry in your veins.”
On
receiving the award the North Wales-born singer said Wales
could now celebrate the hat-trick, following Tom Jones’s
award for Best Male in the Brit pop awards earlier this
year.
He also
led the assembled crowd in a rendition of “oggi, oggi,
oggi”.
Charlotte
Church continued her meteoric rise in the classical world
with the award for Best British Artist which she said she
would be keeping in her bedroom.
“My
parents will probably want to keep it in the living room,”
she said.
She joked,
“My friends will want to nick it but I will check their
bags when they leave.” Both Charlotte Church and Bryn
Terfel were also nominated in other categories, including
Best Album.
The two
performers are key reasons why classical music is enjoying
an all-time popular high, with 16.2 million record sales
annually.
But the
Classical Brit Awards have been criticised in some quarters
for being too populist and reliant on record sales.
Presenters
and performers at the awards ceremony were quick to defend
its merit.
Film maker
Lord David Putnam said, “I don’t care how people find
classical music. The important thing is that they find
it.”
One critic
had dismissed the awards as a “dismal dumbed down display
of tinsel and tat”.
But Bryn
Terfel’s victory, as well as awards for cerebral artists
such as Daniel Harding, for Best Young Artist, and Ian
Bostridge, winning the critics award for his English
Songbook album will have placated some of the
critics.
The
ceremony, though, was unashamedly populist in its appeal.
It began
with violinist Vanessa Mae, playing Storms and Devils
Trill, energetically bounding across the stage and
into the audience itself, accompanied by fireworks.
Charlotte
Church said, “The awards have not been strictly
traditionally. They have been popified just a tiny bit but
with the essence and soul of classical music.”
Nigel
Kennedy, began his piece in the stalls, symbolically
bringing the music closer to the listeners, and probably
enraging the music critics.
Also
likely to rise their ire was Terfel’s admission that he
would love to record with Charlotte Church and the
Stereophonics.
The
14-year-old singer, whose albums Voice of an Angel and
Charlotte Church have made her a global star, was described
as an example and inspiration to young people
Monday
May 8, 2000 Western Mail - Echo
Night
Of Triumph For Wales At New Classical Awards
WELSH baritone Bryn Terfel e-mailed his superstar friend Tom
Jones yesterday to tell him, “I’ve got a Brit Award
too.”
The opera
singer was honoured in the inaugural Brit Classical Awards
as Best Male Artist, and Cardiff teenager Charlotte Church
was named overall Best British Artist, making it a night of
triumph for Wales.
“I was
invited by Tom to go to see him in Las Vegas and he was
telling me about the Brit Award [for Best Male pop artist]
he had won,” said Terfel.
“I told
him Charlotte and myself were up for Brit Classical Awards.
Now we have the hat-trick. I will e-mail him and tell
him.”
Just four
months ago Terfel had surgery for a back complaint but
recovered sufficiently to attend the awards ceremony at the
Royal Albert Hall on Saturday night.
Charlotte
Church was the main attraction of the night, performing two
songs in front of the packed hall, including the Welsh hymn Cwm
Rhondda.
Monday
May 8, 200 - Reuters
UK's
First Classical Music Awards Starts With Bang
By Braden Reddall
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's inaugural awards ceremony for
classical music
started off with a bang on Saturday, opening with violinist
Vanessa Mae
hitting her notes backed by pyrotechnics and thundering
drums.
The Classical Brit Awards is classical music's answer to
annual pop music
gala the Brit Awards and an attempt by organizers to reach a
wider audience.
Mae, described by a U.S. magazine as ``Mozart in Doc
Martens,'' is part of a
young generation helping to broaden classical music's
appeal.
The 21-year-old, who posed in a wet T-shirt for her first
album cover, wore a
backless green-sequinned shirt as she strutted around the
stage playing a
rousing version of ``Storm and Devils Trill'' to kick off
the show.
``Television is a visual medium as well as audio,'' she told
reporters after
the performance.
Later, Welsh teenage singing sensation Charlotte Church
walked away with an
award for British Artist of the Year.
Britons buy more classical albums per capita than their
European counterparts
and twice the amount bought by Americans, but Church enjoys
considerable
success across the Atlantic.
The 14-year-old's debut album ``Voice of an Angel'' launched
her to global
stardom, but she said she could hardly believe she was
currently the most
popular British artist in the United States -- ahead of The
Spice Girls.
``That is great, but it's hard for me to comprehend. It's so
unreal,'' she
said.
``CLASSICAL MUSIC FOR EVERYONE''
Britain's Minister for Culture Chris Smith, prior to giving
Church the award,
spoke out against the ``stuffy people'' who criticized the
Oscars-style
awards ceremony for its populist presentation of classical
music.
``Classical music is for everyone,'' he said to resounding
cheers at the
Royal Albert Hall in London.
The industry is hoping to boost sales, which make up six
percent of the total
in Britain.
Church had also been up for Young British Classical
Performer but that honor
went to Daniel Harding.
Harding, a 24-year-old conductor who is now music director
of Bremen-based
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, beat Church and Mae, among
others.
He said in his speech that he was glad to win an award on
the same day his
favorite soccer team, Manchester United, received a trophy
for winning the
English Premiership title.
While viewing Church on a TV monitor backstage, Harding
said: ``She looks
like (female pop singer) Britney Spears.''
Another member of classical music's younger set, punk
violinist Nigel
Kennedy, took an award for Outstanding Contribution to
Classical Music.
Former Beatle Paul McCartney had been nominated for an award
for Album of the
Year for his crossover classical album ''Working
Classical,'' a tribute to
his late wife Linda.
But the award, voted for by listeners of radio station
Classic FM, went to
``Sacred Arias'' by Andrea Bocelli, the world's
biggest-selling living
classical artist.
The Critics Award -- for recordings by a British orchestra
or featured
British performer -- went to ``The English Songbook'' by Ian
Bostridge,
accompanied by Julius Drake.
Argentina-born Martha Argerich took one of the eight gold
trophies for Female
Artist of the Year, while Male Artist of the Year went to
another Welsh
singer, Bryn Terfel.
Album of the Year for an ensemble or orchestra went to
Stephen Cleobury and
the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, for a recording of
Rachmaninov
Vespers.
Sunday
May 7, 2000 - The Guardian
Charlotte,
14, sings her way to artist of the year award
The teenage singer Charlotte Church was named British artist
of the year at the first Classical Brit Awards at the Royal
Albert Hall in London last night. Charlotte, 14, from
Cardiff, has made a series of CDs and TV appearances.
The violinist Nigel Kennedy received an award for his
outstanding contribution to classical music, while Italian
tenor Andrea Bocelli's Sacred Arias was voted album of the
year. Bryn Terfel, the Welsh baritone, was named male artist
of the year, and Argentinian pianist Martha Argerich the top
female artist of the year.
I'm still looking
for more so if you have any send them here! |
