STARS IN HER EYES
Three years after she axed plan to go into orbit, singer Sarah Brightman hasn’t given up on dream of a space adventure
SINGER Sarah Brightman has experienced plenty of highs in her stellar career – but none came close to the prospect of a trip into space.
And three years after her dream of going into orbit fell to earth, the 58-year-old ex-wife of Andrew Lloyd Webber is still reaching for the stars.
Sarah hit the headlines back
in 2012 when she announced she would be making a trip to the International Space Station and underwent intensive training at a facility near Moscow.
The soprano was due to blast off in a Russian Soyuz rocket on an orbital tourist flight in September 2015 and perform a song chosen by ex-husband Andrew Lloyd Webber. But she stepped down several months before the trip for “personal family reasons”.
The experience had quite an impact on Sarah, who had a No6 hit with I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper in 1978, and she hasn’t yet drawn a line under her childhood dream.
“I didn’t have any choice but to pull out,” she said.
She insisted she still can’t go into detail about why, but added: “It was nothing to do with me.
“I talked with my family very deeply about it and my mother wasn’t very happy at all. So we just made the decision...” she trails off, before continuing: “It’s not that I won’t go later but at the moment I’m just letting things go and I’m concentrating on my own things.
“But I never say never with these things. There was a reason why I was there and why I passed all the tests in Russia. It was very challenging for me but it was an amazing experience.
“So it’s not one that I can just put aside completely. It’s part of my life.”
Out of everything that happened came Hymn, Sarah’s first record in five years and a return to the more classical, operatic sound she is known for.
“I’d come off the space programme in Russia and I needed to ground myself,” she said. “Everything has been quite challenging – not that I failed in any way – and I needed to find somewhere that I could just sing.”
She recalled finding a beach and working with an old friend, an opera coach, “so I could get back to myself ”, before talking to long-time producer Frank Peterson, who encouraged her to work with choirs.
“He asked me what was on my mind and I said I just wanted to work on things that really made me happy, full of hope and light, and I wanted to work with lots of human voices,” she said.
“We started researching choirs and came across loads of things until we came up with Hymn. There are choirs from all corners of the world on there.
“Often, on opera pieces, teachers will suggest getting everybody singing together in harmony as a warm-up. “It gets everybody going and you realise, when you’re all singing together, that there’s a natural thread through all of us as human beings. Choirs are incredibly uplifting.”
Sarah says the feel and theme of the album take her back to younger days.
She added: “I wanted something that reminded me of a peaceful childhood. Not that there are Christian songs on there but pieces that highlight the feelings I felt when I was singing in church in a choir. Our job as artists is to let everybody escape.”
The idea of sharing uplifting music is important to Sarah, who cut her teeth in the industry in the 70s with dance troupes Pan’s People and Hot Gossip.
Her career has taken an extraordinary number of turns, from her early disco days to making a name as a stage star in the original London production of Cats, and then her role as Christine in Lloyd Webber’s first production of The Phantom Of The Opera.
Sarah went on to classical crossover success, selling millions of albums and scoring hits including Time To Say Goodbye with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli.
One of her most memorable career moments came in 2008 with the biggest gig of her life – performing at the
I’d come off the space programme and needed to find somewhere I could just sing