Artist Spotlight: Brooke Fraser
Beautiful, soulful, humanitarian; those are just a few words to describe New Zealand born singer/songwriter Brooke Gabrielle Fraser. Born December 15, 1983 in Wellington, New Zealand, Brooke is the eldest of three, born to former All Blacks (New Zealand’s national team in rugby union) rugby union player Bernie Fraser and his wife Linda Fraser.
Almost everyone in her home country knows the singer as the (then) 19 year-old singer-songwriter from Wellington whose debut album What To Do With Daylight catapulted her into the charts with four number one radio hits and sales exceeding seven times platinum.
Her interest in music started as young as seven, taking piano lessens until she was seventeen, writing songs at twelve and teaching herself to play the acoustic guitar at age twelve.
At around fifteen Brooke received some label interest, but instead choose to continue with school, but did perform at an annual Christian music festival called Parachute and has continued to do this ever year since 2000.
Brooke was a presenter on a cable television show and Began writing for Soul Purpose Magazine at age fifteen and made editor of the magazine in 2002, but gave up the job after she moved to Auckland late 2002 to pursue her music career.
Brooke had about five different labels offering her deals and in late 2002 she ended up signing a multi-album deal with Sony Music Entertainment New Zealand with her manager, Producer Matty J.
In late 2003 her debut album, What to Do with Daylight, came out and debuted at #1 and achieved gold status in the same week. The album eventually went platinum 7 times, selling over 100,000 in New Zealand alone. All five singles released from the album reached the top 20 RIANZ charts, the official singles chart of New Zealand. Her album was the second best selling NZ album of 2004 (behind Hayley Westenra’s Pure which went 11 times platinum).
An avid child sponsorship advocate, Fraser took a trip to Africa to immerse herself in Rwanda, and then went on to visit her sponsor children in Tanzania in 2005, prior to writing and preparing for her follow up album.
During this trip she was so moved that she wrote the song ‘Albertine’, written about a young child (named Albertine) who she met while in Rwanda. It was later decided to make this song the album’s title track.
For the second album she decided to enlist a new band, which was primarily constructed with American musicians who had worked with an array of notable artists. In 2006, Fraser and the band went into the studio in Los Angeles to record the album.
Fraser put up the album’s first single ‘Deciphering Me’ on her MySpace page and was later released to radio and then CD-Single and achieved #4 in the New Zealand Single Charts.
On December 4th, 2006 ‘Albertine’ was released in New Zealand and achieved double platinum status in less then a month and has remained - to date - in the top 20 every week since. One of my favorites is the song ‘Shadowfeet’, her second video for the album.
Fraser moved to Sydney after the success of her first album and still resides there.She is a worship leader and collaborator on the Hillsong United series of worship albums and is currently engaged to fellow Hillsong United member Scott Ligertwood. She is a devout Christian and attends Hillsong Church.
Brooke is an avid charity worked and has been the public face of World Vision in New Zealand since 2005. She has visited Cambodia, Tanzania with World Vision and the Philippines with Opportunity International and has visited Rwanda independently in June 2005, in June 2006 and May 2007, as part of charity event “Hope Rwanda”.
In 2006 she, along with Petra Bagust and Tau from Spacifix, appeared advertising the World Vision 40 Hour Famine - an event which raises funds for children in third world countries. She also sponsors a number of children through World Vision.
I have no idea where the heck I head my head stuck in, but I’ll be sure to follow this inspiring young woman.
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New Age Music 2006 — December 25, 2007 @ 9:05 am
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By Yvsa, February 11, 2008 @ 6:42 pm
Brooke Fraser is engaged to fellow Hillsong musician, Scott Ligertwood, right. But I’ve read in an article on Wikipedia.org, Joel Houston married to Kiwi singer, and fellow Hillsong musician, Brooke Fraser. Huh, what is really going on?