The English Katherine Jenkins: She's a £5.50 an hour waitress but Laura Wright isn't giving up her day job just yet
By Emily Hill
Last updated at 2:04 AM on 21st August 2011
The Queen’s a fan, and her debut album is at the top of the charts, but Britain’s latest singing sensation isn’t giving up the day job just yet.
Laura Wright still waits on tables at a riverside restaurant in London for £5.50 an hour – and says: ‘I don’t want to take anything for granted.’
Soprano Laura, 21, has already been hailed as the English answer to Welsh opera star Katherine Jenkins.
Chart topper: Soprano Laura Wright
But she seems unfazed by the scale of her sudden success and unwilling to let it get in the way of her daily routine, continuing to put in the hours at the Northbank Restaurant and Bar, next to the Millennium Bridge in Central London.
She says: ‘I’d love to be able to give up my bar job. I don’t get paid much. But a lot of people are struggling, especially students. And I’ve still got two years to go in my degree at the Royal College of Music.’
Released last month, Laura’s album The Last Rose has now topped the classical album charts for three weeks. It is a collection of 12 folk songs from around the British Isles, produced by Anna Barry and the team behind the hugely successful album of music from April’s Royal Wedding.
Laura says: ‘They are very old melodies brought forward into the modern day for a new audience. I recorded the album with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and every note they play is crammed with emotion.’
'Incredible': Katherine Jenkins
The small-town girl from Suffolk is aware of the buzz she’s creating. Formerly a member of the all-girl classical quartet All Angels, Laura realises she is being compared to Ms Jenkins.
‘I feel really excited,’ she says. ‘Katherine has done incredible things. And I think you need a rival to her.
‘There is no one who is flying the English flag – or standing proud for brunettes. I’d like to be known one day as better and more successful but it’s a good place to start.’
All Angels have toured with Ms Jenkins, but Laura said: ‘Katherine barely spoke to us.’
Laura was born in Suffolk and with her three older brothers was raised in the tiny village of Framlingham, near Stowmarket, by her father Paul, a financial adviser, and mother Caroline, an artist.
She won two scholarships to attend the fee-paying Framlingham School. It was there she first discovered her talent for singing. In 2005, her music teacher encouraged her to enter BBC Radio 2’s Young Chorister of the Year competition. She reached the final.
‘On the day, I was so unprepared,’ she recalls. ‘The three other girls started to get robed up, with cassocks and medals. I didn’t have any of those things – I was wearing ripped jeans.
‘My auntie lent me her trousers
and the vicar lent me his black cassock which my dad shortened with duct tape.’
She may have fallen short in the style stakes, but Laura was soon able to forget about her slightly odd outfit.
‘When I found out I had won, I was the happiest I have ever been. I just couldn’t stop grinning.’
That success brought her to the attention of record company Universal, which was at that time auditioning young singers for an all-girl quartet and a million-pound deal.
Manager Steve Abbott immediately recognised Laura’s talent. So at the age of 15, she became the youngest member of All Angels.
The group’s first album, released in 2006, entered the UK charts at No 9 and won them a platinum disc.
It was through All Angels that Laura had the chance to sing before the Queen, at the Festival of Remembrance in the Royal Albert Hall in 2007.
The Queen described Laura’s performance as ‘lovely’, but the pressures of performing in All Angels, as well as keeping up with her schoolwork, were beginning to take their toll and Laura started to suffer from alopecia.
Then, last year, she took the tough decision to leave All Angels in order to concentrate on her degree, for which she had won a scholarship in 2009.
Last Christmas, Laura was given a present – an old book of songs and ¬lyrics including many traditional songs from all over the British Isles such as Scarborough Fair, Skye Boat Song and The Last Rose Of Summer.
Her Irish grandmother, who had sung them as a girl, had decided to pass them on. It was this gift that gave Laura the inspiration for her album.
These days, she sings mostly at large fundraisers for the Royal British Legion and at private concerts and sporting events.
‘I love to perform before sports
fans,’ she says. ‘At one rugby international, I had to sing the Welsh national anthem.
‘I’d been panicking
and I’d had just a few weeks to learn it and had been texting Aled Jones, who is a good friend, begging for help with the pronunciation.
‘If it goes wrong you’ve got 50,000 Welsh fans who could turn on you at any moment!’
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