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=Pre
Concert Press=
The
Hectic Life of a Teenage Superstar
By Sharon McDaniel, Palm Beach Post Music Writer
Maria Church answers her cell phone at the family's home: "Charlotte? Yes, um, just give her two minutes. She's got to go upstairs and get changed."
She lays the phone down, gently hustling her daughter up the stairs. Minutes tick by: A television blares in the background -- the commercial for a new supernatural thriller with Keanu Reeves reaches from Cardiff, Wales, to West Palm Beach. Another telephone rings nearby, adding to the hubbub of voices, household activity and TV chatter.
"Hello?" This time, it's dad, James Church. "No, she hasn't forgotten you," he says in warm, reassuring tones. "She just needs a few more minutes."
Dressing isn't going so smoothly. Still, a poised Charlotte Church picks up, and in the most mollifying manner asks, "Hullo? Could you do me a very big favor? Could you call back in five minutes?"
The 15-year-old Welsh girl -- and international singing sensation -- needs time to change out of her school uniform. Fifteen minutes later, she answers the cell phone from the family car.
"Yes, now is perfect, thank you. I'd just come in from school, and now we're going up to . . . " -- she pauses, turning from the phone to yell, "Where are we going, Mum? Mum? MumMumMumMum," she intones as if it's a vocal warm-up.
"Oh yes, we're going to Guildford," remarks Church, matter-of-factly. "I sing Panis Angelicus tomorrow for Prince Charles. Where? I have no idea. Mum, where is it? Oh, it's a church, St. David's, named for a Welsh saint. It's in Aldershot, where the Welsh guard's based and since Charles is the Prince of Wales, it's there. How many times have I sung for Prince Charles? I'm not sure -- how many, Mum?"
Welcome to the mad, mad world of a young, in-demand classical and pop singer. One day, it's school. The next day, it's Prince Charles. And this Sunday, it's West Palm Beach and the Kravis Center.
At 7:30 p.m., Church makes her Florida debut singing Broadway, film music, light classics and folk songs with the Florida Philharmonic. She'll pick from a list of nearly 12 songs, several from her wildly popular CDs -- Voice of an Angel and Charlotte Church, both on Sony Classical.
There are Pie Jesu, which first brought her to public attention, Panis Angelicus and Amazing Grace. Hits from Carousel, South Pacific, Porgy and Bess, West Side Story, even The Secret Garden, are possibilities. Rossini and Gounod arias could alternate with the folk songs Danny Boy and My Lagan Love.
The Florida trip won't be all work, either. Today, Church's at -- where else? -- Disney World with her family.
Back on the cell phone, she is asked whether she ever accompanies herself at the piano.
"Oh God no! I do play piano, but since I've embarked on this career, I don't really have any time -- Mom, you need to push that thing down to get the window to work. Sorry, it's Operation Impossible here. We're trying to close the window, and everything's blowing everywhere," she says, between peals of laughter. "I'd like to do more playing as soon as my career slows down."
Fat chance. March 1 marked the fifth time the Welsh youngster sang for Prince Charles. Church's audiences have included former President and Mrs. Clinton, Pope John Paul II and Queen Elizabeth II. She has sung for 50 legislators to open the Welsh Assembly, and 72,500 to open a rugby match.
Not bad for a kid who first garnered attention on a British TV variety show in 1997. TV is still good to her: She blitzes PBS with concert specials, plus guest spots on the networks' top-rated talk shows. Last month, on her 15th birthday, she presented the classical Grammy Awards on TV in Los Angeles.
From the start, her first two CDs began selling like hotcakes -- more than 5 million sold to date. With Voice of an Angel, Church became the youngest classical solo artist to have a Top 30 ranking on U.S. charts. She's a household name on at least four continents. There are two sites on the Internet: www.charlottechurch.com and www.charlottechurch.net. In April, an autobiography, Voice of an Angel: My Life (So Far), will be out.
But the freeway telephone call is far more telling. Charlotte Church, the "singing sensation," is Charlotte Church, Teen Zone dweller. She percolates with teen energy, teen talk and teen chaos. The dependence-independence struggle and the rough road to self-discovery lurk on the fringes of the conversation.
Typically, school is very much on her mind. Next year at 16, she'll take the Welsh version of the SAT exams. She's considering college -- probably in the United States, she says, as a history or philosophy major. On tour, two tutors work with her for up to three hours a day, keeping her up to speed with her Cardiff classmates.
From anywhere on the road, she'll pick up the phone to call her school friends. Often, she brings along one or another friend: Sophie to the Grammys, Kim to Turkey and Granada, Abbie to Japan and Australia.
Going home to Wales means "I can be a normal kid, be with my friends, go back to school and go to parties and shopping and all that good stuff," she rattles off happily. At home is her Chinese-style bedroom, decorated with statues of dragons and wizards, full of books, magazines, candles, incense sticks and CDs -- loads of CDs.
An only child, she's especially close to maternal relatives in Cardiff: "There's Auntie Caroline and her husband, Mark, an electrician -- he's like my brother, we're really close. And grandmother's name is Maureen -- she's really wicked! Really nice, not like a grandmother, more like a mother, right, Mum? Grandfather used to be a rock-and-roller in the '50s and '60s."
Despite the frantic rush to dress and hit the road, the day has been pretty ordinary. She got up at 7 a.m., went to school in the U.S. equivalent of the 10th grade, attending music, geography, math and computer classes, and got out at 3:40 p.m.
"This is an easy one compared to a day on the road," she says, grateful relief in her voice. "Touring, oh, it's a major part of my career, and my career, it is my life: It controls everything you do. With this kind of life, career and everyday mingles into one."
Some things never change, like dressing for a concert.
"I'm always in a rush. No matter how much time I have, I'm always rushing," she says with good-humored exasperation. "About 60 minutes before stage, I do my make-up and my hair as well, then I like to chill. But I don't like to be completely by myself, I like mum in my room before I go on -- I get agitated before I go on stage."
Reading is a favorite outlet, especially The Memoirs of Cleopatra, Margaret George's 1997 novel, a recent gift from a British friend in Los Angeles.
"She's fantastic! It's an unbelievable book," Church says. "She's an amazing person, very inspirational. What's most fantastic, she was so strong in her younger years. She became queen at 17 or 18. And also, she handles things with dignity, even when her life was so full of strife . . . People, please! Can we have a little calm? I'm talking on the phone! . . . and dignity even at the last minute when her children are taken off. She was so smart and very courageous."
Does she see any parallels to her own life?
"Oh no!" Church says, laughing. "I'm not really a great, fantastic figure!"
She suddenly turns quiet and pensive: "But in context, I guess it's about dealing with a lot of pressure, how to be strong and mature for your years, with things thrown at you from a lot of directions."
Gone is the earlier playfulness, the race-ahead confidence of a good-natured, bossy kid. She's mulling over the mental light bulb she just switched on. It's a magical moment, not to be trampled. I wish her all the best at the prince's concert, and say how much I enjoyed talking with her.
"Nice speaking to you," Church signs off, a sweetly singsong lilt to her voice and a new, ladylike formality. "Thank you, 'bye."
Charlotte's celeb
By
Bart Mills, Sun Sentinel
Charlotte Church, the little girl from Wales with the big voice from heaven, wants some crispy chicken bits.
The prodigy, 14, has worked from dawn to past her bedtime, singing for her supper in TV appearances in New York and Los Angeles, and now she wants her crispy chicken bits.
It doesn't matter that she has sung for the pope, the queen and the Clintons. It doesn't matter that millions of music-lovers all over the world are snapping up her three albums, Voice of an Angel, Charlotte Church and Dream a Dream. It doesn't matter that she's a role model or that maintaining her miraculous voice requires a healthy diet, she wants her crispy chicken bits.
In her limo, cruising down Sunset Boulevard after her last appearance of the day, a promotion for KCET, Los Angeles' PBS station, she's the nicest boss any entourage could want to serve. Eventually receiving and inhaling her chicken bits, she keeps up a stream of smiles and bright banter despite her long workday.
"Honestly, I do have a completely normal life at home," she says. "I go to school with my friends, I go shopping with my mum, we eat dinner at my nana's [grandmother's] house.
"Lots of times I take a friend along when I have to travel for work. I have two best friends, Kim and Jo, and they take turns coming with me ..."
It's a fairy tale life for a youngster who became an overnight star in '99. Her freakishly mature voice, heard during a brief British TV appearance, earned her a contract with Sony.
Her sales have passed 2 million and her earnings so far have reportedly topped $15 million. All that is in trust until she's 21. In the meantime, she scrapes by on $20 a week allowance.
Her father, James, a burglar alarm installer, and her mother, Marie, a municipal housing officer in Cardiff, quit their jobs to handle the career of their only child. Marie accompanies Charlotte on her trips while James stays home.
Marie Church says, "She's still very much a child and wants to remain a child. She easily adapts to the two lives she's leading. She takes it better than I do, honestly. That's easy because she's very academic. We block out periods when nothing interrupts her schooling and her home life.
"She still gets told off when she needs it. She has friends over for sleepovers and if it's late and they're still up, I scream at them to get to sleep, like with any group of girls."
Sometimes it works the other way.
In the limo, when her mother starts to sing to herself, Charlotte says, "Mum!" Mum apologizes but Charlotte adds, "Don't be sorry, just stop."
This dialogue fits into an easy back-and-forth relationship, like the conversation they had when Charlotte was 8: "I want to be a singer," the girl said. "Right, you and millions of others," answered her mother sensibly.
The Churches gave Charlotte every chance to realize her ambition, entering her in competitions and engineering her life-changing TV appearance at age 11.
Music was in her blood. Her aunt and grandfather have had musical careers, though with far less success. Her grandfather, named Gary Cooper, played with a '60s group called Amen Corner but left it before its hit, Bend Me, Shake Me.
"When I started, people took me for a religious singer because my first CD had a lot of sacred music," Charlotte says. "I recorded those songs [Pie Jesu, Ave Maria, etc.] because I really liked them and I'd known them the longest."
Her second CD is more decidedly secular, particularly Just Say Hello. She sang this song in a two-minute TV ad for Ford that was the first "global roadblock" spot. It aired worldwide.
Her third CD, Dream a Dream, held the No. 1 spot on Billboard magazine's holiday albums chart for several weeks.
"One day I'd like to sing opera and pop and also be an actress," she says. "I'd like to be an all-around artist. I'd like to play dopey, gullible characters like Lisa Kudrow."
She has already guested on a British TV drama called Heartbeat and on an episode of Touched by an Angel.
As she grows up, she says, she wants to be "like Drew Barrymore, but without the drugs and alcohol, or Jodie Foster. Sometimes I want to be independent, sometimes I want help and advice. My parents ask me weekly if I'm still happy doing this. They say, `Tell us if it gets be too much.'"
"I don't feel any kind of pressure," Charlotte says. "I don't think about things, I just do them. I go in and say, `Oh, I'll do my best.' I don't worry because worry gets you nowhere. I do worry about this spot on my face, but I don't think about the future -- maybe a week ahead."
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