Kelly Newton-Wordsworth

Concerts with Kelly Newton-Wordsworth, international concert and recording artist:

Raised in Perth, Australia, Kelly Newton-Wordsworth was born into a musical family. Her grandfather and his brother were joint founders of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra.

She taught herself to play the guitar at the age of 6 and did her first concert at the age of 7. Throughout her schooling years she performed in many productions, winning awards for drama and singing.

She continued her pursuit of theatre at university, but surprisingly, Kelly's life took another turn here where she graduated as a lawyer. She practiced briefly, and qualified as a barrister and solicitor, but the lure of the stage won out.

Her diverse talents brought a wide variety of achievements. She acted in leading roles in Perth theatre, including, "Dorothy" in the "Wizard of Oz" and "Lady Macbeth", turned down a movie with Nicole Kidman, hosted her own Australian Broadcasting Commission Radio program, and took her music to a host of events and venues throughout Australia.

All the while, her list of national and international awards and honours was growing.

She recorded her first album, "On the other side", an acoustic album of original and Irish ballads, just prior to moving to the country. On the strength of this album she was invited and flown over to sing in the National Folk festival, one of her songs, "Song for a pioneer Woman", having been selected as a one of the finals in the National Folk Songwriting Competition.

Her second album, "Changing Hearts", was recorded on CD and received critical acclaim with songs from it winning a number of songwriting awards from the Western Australian Music Industry Association. "Changing Hearts" was also nominated for best CD and Kelly for best songwriter and best female vocalist.

One of the award winning songs, "A Whale for the Killing", was included on the soundtrack of the video documentary "The Last Whale", which was televised and sold worldwide.

Four of Kelly's songs were also selected for inclusion on a composite album entitled "Women at Work", featuring Western Australian female singers. "Women at Work" won the West Australian Music Industry's best album award.

In 1996, Kelly recorded "Lately I've been changing". One of the songs from that album, "The Kalgoorlie Two-up School", was released Australia wide on a compilation album of Australian classics entitled "This is Australia".

Kelly received an Award of Merit in the 1997 South Pacific International Song Contest for her song "Untouchable Man" (from "Changing Hearts") and in that year she also received a Certificate of Distinction from the Unisong International Song Contest for another of her songs, "Serious"(Listen) (from "Lately I've been Changing").

In 1997, she also won an award for being the best female artist at the prestigious West Australian Boyup Brook Country Music Awards.

In 1997, Kelly was invited to sing at the opening ceremony of the World Healing Summit in California. On the strength of her performance and due to the messages in her songs, she was invited to perform at the World Women of Peace convention in Bosnia (May 1998) and she was a special guest at a concert at the World Healing Summit in Glastonbury, England.

In 1998, Kelly performed a number of supports for international artists, including Don McLean.

She also recorded a song for the soundtrack of the Australian feature film, "Justice".

Her 1998 CD single/CD-ROM entitled "What is happening to our forests?" was a Western Australian produced first to feature an interactive component including a video clip, slides and information.

In 1999 Kelly produced a new CD album "For our Planet". It features 3 video clips, a single ("Serious") and a CD single/CD-ROM ("What is happening to our forests?").

In 1999 Kelly began performing in Germany, supporting famous German artists such as Willi Astor and Wolfgang Ambrose before audiences of up to 8000 people.

In 2000, she was invited to submit a piece for the book, "Bessie's Brollie", a collection of prominent Western Australian, "Women for the Environment".

In early 2001 she had her first concert tour in Germany as the headline act, performing at cities in southern Germany such as Nurenberg, Bamberg and Munich.

Throughout the year Kelly returned to Germany, 8 times, to perform concerts and to appear and perform on television shows including "Live at 5" on Euro Disney (the Disney channel in Europe) and the RTL Breakfast Show (RTL is Germany's highest rating television station).

Kelly also performed live on radio in Germany including Nuremberg's highest rating station Radio F and radio stations in Munich and Frankfurt.

Kelly's travel in 2001 was sponsored by Malaysian Airlines.

In November, 2001, she won the environmental section in the Australian Songwriting Contest, and was told by the Australian Songwriters Association that she is in the top 1% of songwriters in Australia. The contest received 2,400 entries form all over Australia in a number of categories. Newton-Wordsworth was the only winner from Western Australia.

She won with her song, "One World, One Planet".... an emotional plea that expresses the sentiment that we only have one world and it's time we took better care of it.

With her husband William and two of their children -- a third child lives and studies in Perth -- she works a property in Williams, Western Australia.

She has been farming biodynamically for the last 14 years following the method invented by the German genius, Rudolf Steiner, using no chemicals or pesticides.

In 1996, she won the ABC Rural Woman of the Year Award for the Great Southern area of Western Australia for her work in the field of sustainable agriculture.

In 2002, she performed in the biggest roadshow any Australian artist has ever done in Germany. She did a tour of 30 concerts in 29 cities, doing 2 hour concerts, solo with her guitar together with over 400 slides showing the beauty and character of Western Australia.

Her company, Newtone Productions,which she runs together with William, worked together with international partners, Cinestar, adventure Holidays, and the West Australian and Australian Tourism Commissions. Her tour was opened by the Western Australian Minister for Tourism, Clive Brown, in Berlin.

Her German music company, Newtone Music Germany, produced an album, "My Ancient Land" to go with the tour.

Due to the success of her concert tour in Germany, Kelly was invited to perform in late 2002 at the "Baden Treffen", the biggest songwriter's festival in Europe.In the last concert for the festival, she performed to around, 10,000 people, solo with her guitar, for two hours. According to television and radio reports, people considered her to be the best bard of the "Barden Treffen".

After these performances, she sang for the German Government, in their celebrations for the "day of the open door", where citizens can go into the offices of the politicians and see what is happening, "behind the scenes".

In 2003, she travelled to Germany to work with an artist who is signed to Neotone Music Productions Limited, a company that she and William own with international partners. This artist Gil Ofarim was at that time invited by Jon bon Jovi to open his concert to 70,000 people at the Olympia Stadium in Munich. He and Kelly wrote the song "In your eyes" together, which was released in Germany with a telefilm that has been made starring Gil as himself. This song was in the German top 100 for more than ten weeks and was in the top 10 songs on internet charts.

Kelly and William through their international record company Neotone have received interest from Ric Wake, a leading US producer with sales of over 400 million albums, in working together to release Gil Ofarim in the US. Kelly has co-written a number of the songs with Gil to be released on the proposed new album.

Whilst in Western Australia Kelly performs her individually as a solo artist with guitar. She mainly performs concerts, including recently performing with Jon Butler. Kelly is also performing jazz with The Oz Big Band, which is a well known Western Australian 20 piece big band.

2004. Kelly has recently returned from performing in India and the US. In India she was a main act at a the Leh World Music Festival, which was held in Ladakh, India. This festival was telecast live on TV throughout India, with the highest ratings in the country. At the time, due to India's massive population, it was suggested that it may be the largest live audience for a concert ever. She also performed in Delhi and worked at their invitation with Ladakhi filmakers to make a video clip in Ladakh. Kelly has just returned from the US where she performed at some venues in New York and worked on songwriting with Gil Ofarim.

Kelly is working on releasing a number of new albums in 2005 including jazz and gospel albums. She is also completing a filmscript for a film entitled "The Housewife".

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Copyright Williams River Produce, last updated April 2006)