TESS JAINE
Singer/songwriter Jacquie Walters has released her fourth album The Forest, a confessional-style folk album.
Songbird Singing and performing has played a major part in Jacquie Walter’s life and her new album takes a look back at that life with the album touching on gratitude, grief and wry reflections on her personal dating experiences. Adrienne Matthews finds out more.
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acquie Walters is one of those people who oozes honesty and integrity and her fourth and latest solo album is a kaleidoscope of ballads that shows this yet again. Its inspiration is the torrid internet dating fiascos she has experienced throughout the last few years, grief from her family’s loss of a loved one and gratitude for the opportunity to live in a paradise like the Nelson region. In essence it is about love; the search for it, the irony of it and the breadth of feelings and emotions it engenders.
As a student of Linwood College, Christchurch, Jacquie received a scholarship to study at the United World College of the Atlantic in South Wales for two years. “This was an opportunity of a lifetime and where I discovered my singing voice,” she says.
Writing songs has been in Jacquie’s blood for over thirty years during which time she has been turning all manner of life experiences into exceptional songs which she has performed throughout New Zealand and overseas.
Embarking on a career in writing and communication on her return, music was never very far off her radar and she was a founding member of the group “Pounamu” in the early 1990s with Ariana Tikao and Leigh Taiwhiti. She and Ariana
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Back in New Zealand she achieved a university degree before her love of Shakespeare led her back to the UK to complete an MA at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon.