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ZEAL comes 3rd in Rising Star Contest + 2nd Place in Pan Pacific!

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ZEAL at Aotea Centre for the Rising Star Contest.

You are now looking at the Under-25 women’s barbershop quartet ranked 3rd in the WORLD and 2nd in the Pan Pacific Region!!!!

Since competing at the national competition in Wellington in April we have been rehearsing and performing like crazy people to get ourselves up to scratch. With coaching from some barbershop greats like the magnificent Carole Persinger, Lori Lyford and Kim Vaughn, we transformed our ballad and added some sparkle to the showmanship plan for our uptune.

In the weeks leading up to the big day, we had an intense performance schedule lined up including a trip to Nelson in early July where we performed at a number of schools promoting the Young Women in Harmony organisation. We really wanted to work on overcoming our nerves and all the performance experience was the perfect way to achieve this. It also kept our vocal cords nice and warm and stretchy since we were doing so much singing!

ZEAL on stage at Aotea Centre.

The Sweet Adelines Rising Star Contest and Pan Pacific Harmony Festival were held in conjunction with each other at the Aotea Centre in Auckland on July 13-14. We were drawn to go first so had the pleasure of getting up at 4am so we could be fully dressed, hair-styled, made-up and warmed up by our 9am backstage call.

It was all over in a FLASH – and we felt incredibly happy with how we did. We had worked so hard and gave the best performance we could have hoped for. When we got off that stage – WOW, the adrenaline! We were so stoked with how far we’d come since April and our commitment to the performance we’d just done.

We had really high hopes for the contest but knew there was some very strong competition so we were happy with our 3rd placing in Rising Star and 2nd place in the Pan Pacific Festival.

Being part of a quartet is such a special journey. There are always ups and downs but the thrill of performing with your sisters on stage and leaving with the adrenaline running through your veins is addictive. I’m excited to see where our journey continues to take us! x

 

ZEAL with previous Rising Star champions, C’est La Vie!

 

 

My quartet ZEAL won at our first ever contest!

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ZEAL performing at Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington.

ZEAL first formed in around April 2015 when I finally joined the Greater Auckland Chorus (a Sweet Adelines women’s barbershop group) after having already lived in Auckland for TWO YEARS! I met two lovely young gals at GAC who were looking for a fourth member of their quartet. It was almost like fate as I was crossing my fingers that I would be able to get myself into a quartet since I had always dreamed of doing this….. so just like that things were off to a great start.

Our first ever performance was at the Auckland regional Young Women in Harmony competition, held at Macleans College in June. I was unbelievably nervous, which was unusual since I’m used to performing solo but I think something about singing tenor in a quartet is quite exposing! But, I got through it and I was PROUD!

 

ZEAL’z first ever performance, 19th June 2015 guest performing at YWIH contest.

 

We spent most of last year getting a couple of contest songs together as preparation for the national Sweet Adelines competition which just took place – we’re all students so we have to work around each others schedules to find time to practice but we do what we can.

I was back home to Nelson for the summer but when I returned in February 2016 it was full steam ahead with only 8 or 9 weeks lead up to contest. We did a test run of our contest package at a chorus performance 10 days before competition, it went alright but we were definitely getting ready to put our BEST ever performance onto that stage.

On the afternoon of the 29th April, we hit the stage of the Michael Fowler Centre. To say we were nervous was an understatement but we went out there and we held it together! Our ballad was the lovely ‘At Last’ and we sang popular uptune ‘Driving Me Crazy’.

In terms of the results of the competition, we had absolutely zero expectations – we just wanted to do the best performance we could and to be able to say that we gave it 100%. Suffice to say, we were extraordinarily shocked and thrilled when we received 3rd place and the Novice Quartet award (for the best first time competitor)!

HOORAH!

It was such an amazing weekend and the support we received from our fellow chorus members, quartet competitors, and Sweet Adelines was utterly astounding.

And now we prepare to compete in the International Rising Star Youth Quartet Contest…. bring it on! xx

SUPER excited after receiving our 3rd place medals and the Novice Quartet award!

MUST-LISTEN new collab from Jacob Collier!

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Snarky Puppy feat. Jacob Collier & Big Ed Lee - "Don't You Know" (Family Dinner Volume Two)

That’s right…… two incredible musical acts have joined forces to create the above MASTERPIECE. If you haven’t watched it yet, I highly suggest you click play.

Jacob Collier is a young jazz prodigy from London, raised with music in his blood – he can play pretty much any instrument, creates intricate a cappella arrangements, writes authentic and fresh original music, and also wrote, recorded and produced his album In My Room in. his. room.

Snarky Puppy is a musical collective led my Michael League who play groovy instrumental music and, for their albums Family Dinner Vols 1 & 2, collab with singers and make awesome tracks such as this one. They’ve been around since 2004 and have released many many albums, toured the world a bunch of times and continue to make addictively fresh sounds.

I think what makes these artists stand out from the crowd, in my opinion at least, (other than talent, hard work, general creativity) is innovation, authenticity, a never-ending passion for music and a commitment to create music that genuinely stirs their souls. And then they give us the pleasure of being able to hear that music, for which I am eternally grateful.

Look out for more fantastic tracks from these guys!

 

 

 

 

 

My music is coming to your screens!

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Hey everyone,

Hope you have had a fantastic first month of 2016!

Check out the BRAND NEW trailer for Birds of a Feather by Working Edge Productions – a documentary I wrote some music for last summer. Doesn’t it look great?! And the first piece of music you hear in the trailer is one of my tracks… *jumps up and down excitedly*. Let me tell you, this is a maaaassive buzz for me!

I hope this is the first of many such projects that I can get involved with in the future!

The documentary is about an annual boat race held on the Waikato river each year, the Great Waikato Seagull race, where people race using British Seagull outboard motors – which date back to WWII and were once known as ‘the best outboard motors in the world’.

Birds of a Feather is a Silver Award winner for the Spotlight Documentary Film Awards 2015 and an Official Selection Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival 2016. There will be a DVD release of the documentary and it will hopefully be appearing on our TV screens sometime in the future.

It was actually a whole year ago (last summer) that I spent many hours composing the pieces I contributed to the documentary. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to get involved in this project. Hard work reaps rewards!

On a side note, you may notice I have revamped my website – it really needed a renovation and I’m pretty happy with where it’s at now.

There’s a new biography page which contains some exciting little tidbits about what 2016 is bringing – do check it out!

I’m so looking forward to having more awesome musical experiences this year and making the most of every opportunity I can get my hands on. In the meantime, I am enjoying the lovely summer weather in Nelson before I head to back to Auckland in a couple of weeks.

I hope you’re all enjoying the sun!

Until next time,

Jessie Xx

Post-Vegas competition recap!

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Hey all,

My final exam of the year is over and I will soon be heading back to Nelson for the summer! Very excited about it! Feels like a lifetime since I’ve been home even though it’s only been nine weeks. I’ve worked extra hard this semester, especially since I had time off from uni when I travelled to America, and I’m hoping the work will pay off when I get my final grades back.

Just in case you’re wondering – I do have two more years of university before I’m finished!

I’ll graduate in 2018 with a Bachelor of Music majoring in Composition and a Bachelor of Arts majoring in French. My current plans involve spending one of my remaining two years studying on exchange in Canada, but more about that at a later date ;) In Nelson I’m looking forward to spending time with my family, doing some gigs and going on some more hiking trips and getting back to this amazing scenery. Although the snow may be gone by now! Photo credit: LifeformLabs.

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It’s been about a month since I returned from my trip to Las Vegas where I competed with Greater Auckland Chorus at the Sweet Adelines International Convention! The chorus achieved a score improved by 120 points since they last competed internationally and improved their world ranking by one place so overall it was a very successful experience.

I spent 9 days there and witnessed some truly incredible performances – the highlights being the days of the quartet and chorus finals. I did have a bad case of the flu for the majority of the trip unfortunately so I was holed up in the hotel most of the time! I didn’t let it ruin the trip though and I’m so stoked I got to go and have my first international convention experience with Greater Auckland Chorus this year. Bring on the next one!! In the meantime check out the little gallery below with some great shots which captured the fun memories of us having a blast on stage! Thanks to Read Photography.

A massive thanks again to everyone who helped me get to America! Your contributions are the reason I was able to make it over there and I am so grateful for that! The ladies of Nelson Bays Harmony Chorus in particular were a big help in getting me to Vegas – and of course my Mum, who is my biggest supporter, was the mastermind behind the major fundraising event we held. Mums are the best! 

My most recent barbershop experience was doing a gig earlier this month with Molto! Quartet – the 2015 Sweet Adelines NZ champion quartet who also competed in Vegas! I was their replacement tenor as theirs is currently overseas. It was a great performance opportunity for me and good experience singing with different voices in a quartet! My own quartet ZEAL Quartet is competing for the first time at the NZ National Convention in 2016 in Wellington in May and also at the Under-25 Rising Star Quartet Contest in July in Auckland! Very exciting times – lots of hard work ahead!

Gig with Molto 7th Nov
Molto + me after our gig singing at a dinner function for the Women Judges of the High Court!

I know I say this every time but I will endeavour to actually do a blog post at least once a month from now on. So much stuff is going on in my life and it’s quite nice to be able to write it all down and fully appreciate the awesome things I get to be a part of! I’m going to make the most of this summer to be productive and get some exciting projects underway. More updates to come :)

Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Jessie Xx