Daniel Bedingfield Joins Line-Up for Opening

DANIEL BEDINGFIELD
Joins stellar line-up for Vector Arena official opening

VECTOR ARENA proudly announces that New Zealand-born pop star Daniel Bedingfield will celebrate the opening of the country's newest asset.

Daniel -- who's hits include Get Thru This, James Dean, If You're Not The One, I Can't Read You, Never Gonna Leave Your Side and Friday -- will join a stellar line-up of iconic New Zealand artists next Thursday, April 19.

Master of ceremonies, New Zealand Idol judge and showbiz veteran Frankie Stevens will be joined on stage by Goldenhorse, Che Fu, Ray Columbus, Dinah Lee, Don McGlashan, Sir Howard Morrison, Hollie Smith, Frankie Stevens, Aaradhna and Yulia.

"It will be the biggest party in New Zealand for just $30," says Vector Arena Chief Executive Bruce Mactaggart (subs: crct).

"Never before has this level of entertainment been offered in New Zealand under the one roof at such an affordable price. We want everyone to come and party with us, to come and enjoy our wonderful new facility."

Tickets to Vector Arena's Official Opening party are on sale with Ticketmaster www.ticketmaster.co.nz. Tickets for reserved seating areas are just $30.

A limited number of corporate tables are also being sold to this history-making celebration. Corporates will attend a black tie function, partake in dinner by award-winning chef Warwick Brown (Mikano, Cin Cin), enjoy beverages, receive a souvenir booklet and have their "mind blown" by a 90-minute gala. For more details, contact Jessica Milne 09 3581250 or email jmilne@vectorarena.co.nz.

The dazzling gala, involving more than 280 entertainers and featuring some big-name international and local acts together with the Vector Wellington Orchestra, is being created by Stan Wolfgramm -- artistic director/producer best known for his work on Westfield Style Pasifika. The event’s Executive Producer is Barry Newman, Australasia's foremost events producer who has masterminded some of Australia's biggest events and worked with some of the world's hottest acts. The pair will lead a talented team of New Zealand producers to deliver a world-class event.

Money raised during the night will benefit the Salvation Army.

Mr Mactaggart says the celebrations will be world-class -- befitting this world-class facility.

"There will be surprises from around the world," says Mr Mactaggart. "People will see things that we've never seen before in New Zealand. Pyrotechnics and acts that have only ever been seen in cities like New York or London will be staged on opening night.

"Now we have this wonderful new facility, we are able to enjoy entertainment at a new level. These celebrations will be at a remarkably high quality with no expense or energy spared. It will be best in class."

Mr Mactaggart says that general admission prices have deliberately been kept low, due to the generosity of sponsors, so opening night can be enjoyed by everyone. "This is a people's building and we want all New Zealanders to embrace it as their own. It is a marvellous new asset not only for Auckland but for all of the country."

Mr Mactaggart says already the arena is changing the landscape of entertainment in New Zealand.

"We have some more very exciting announcements to make in the next few days about acts that would not have contemplated coming here before Vector Arena. This is a new dawn for New Zealand."

For more information on Vector Arena, visit www.vectorarena.co.nz

For all media inquiries, contact Sandra Roberts 021 525104 or email: sandra@skip.co.nz

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Daniel Bedingfield bio
Snapshot
Daniel was born in New Zealand and moved to the UK when he was a child. After his song "Gotta Get Thru This" (which he recorded in his bedroom) gathered momentum on white label, surprisingly through the underground garage music scene, it went on to become a #1 hit in the UK Top 40 in December 2001. He has since had 2 more #1 singles ("If You're Not The One" and "Never Gonna Leave Your Side"), as well as three further top 10 hits. His debut album, also titled Gotta Get Thru This, reached #2 in the UK albums chart and went on to sell more than 3 million copies.
In 2003 he appeared on the Delirious? album World Service, singing guest backing vocals on "Every Little Thing".
On New Year's Day 2004, Beddingfield nearly lost his life in a severe car accident while visiting his parents in New Zealand. As a result, he was left with serious head and neck injuries from which he took six months to recover.
He was subsequently signed to Polydor Records and has been one of their most successful artists in recent years. As well as critical acclaim, he won a BRIT Award in 2004 for Best British Male Artist
The longer version
www.danielbedingfield.com

Daniel was born in New Zealand then raised by social worker parents in South East London. By age six he was writing songs, by age nine rapping along to a boombox at school, and by age sixteen was composing on his first keyboard. When he was eighteen, Daniel wrote the song that would change everything.
A song of self-belief, frustration and the first pangs of young love, 'Gotta Get Thru This' sat unopened for months in A&R-man bins around London. Indeed the track, with its overwhelming and innovative garage sound was still being widely ignored when garage hotshot EZ plucked one of Daniel's self-pressed twelve inch singles for inclusion on the compilation album 'Pure Garage 4'. Almost instantly, the track blew up everywhere from Brixton to Ayia Napa and propelled Daniel straight to number one in the UK charts. Not bad for a song recorded in Daniel's bedroom with one computer and one microphone.

Eventually signing to Polydor, Daniel unveiled an astonishingly diverse debut album, mixing frenetic drum'n'bass and hugely understated classic balladry with funk, soul, ragga and pop. Daniel's emerging talent combined traditional songwriting flair with some impressively sophisticated production knowhow. Impossible to second-guess, the album covered so many styles, tempos and influences that it immediately had the ring of a career-encompassing greatest hits collection -- and, to be fair, by the time Daniel had finished unveiling singles, it wasn't far off. In the end the album sprouted six singles 'Gotta Get Thru This', 'James Dean', 'If You're Not The One', 'I Can’t Read You', 'Never Gonna Leave Your Side' and 'Friday'. Among these were five Top 10 hits -- including three UK Number Ones. To date the album has sold 1.7 million in the UK and 2.9 million worldwide (650,000 in the US).

"I've always known since I was nine years old that I would be doing this," Daniel said in one of the many Stateside interviews published in 2003, as he watched his album catch the imagination of the American public. "Whatever happens, I'm ready for it". But in reality nobody could have been prepared for what really happened next. On January 2 2004 Daniel was cut from the wreckage of his jeep near Auckland, New Zealand. The roof of the jeep had broken Daniel's neck, and he would have a metal frame bolted into his skull for three months. While the fashion world briefly considered the role of the neckbrace in 2004 catwalk chic, Daniel began a physically and mentally draining course of physiotherapy. One unlikely benefit to come from the accident was that Daniel's pace of life slowed down for the first time in two years. After the transition from bedroom-dwelling zero to chart-topping hero, Daniel's head had already been spinning. "Before the accident it seemed as if whatever I was doing, I was five steps ahead of myself," Daniel remembers. "It was hard to keep my head above water. And now... Well, now I'm just really enjoying life. I have a sense -- which I know some people only experience far later in life -- that I know who I am. And I’m comfortable".

These changes in Daniel's outlook have made an understandable impact on his music. Though some of the songs on Daniel's second album 'Second First Impression' date back to those days recording in a bedroom, others ooze a new confidence and self-belief, a result of Daniel's production partnership with LA producer Jack Joseph Puig, a veteran whose credits include idiosyncratic and unique talents like Beck, The Rolling Stones, No Doubt, Weezer and The Black Crowes. "Puig", an impressed Daniel says, "has the whole world in his head at one time". "Communication was vital to the album", Daniel says. "We had continued and extended conversations about how to retain an essence of what made my music me." To this end the sounds crafted around many of the songs are based on Daniel's own home demos; other tracks were built from Daniel's own primitive beatbox accompaniments and some even retain those percussion effects on the finished CD. To date, three singles have been released from the album, 'Nothing Hurts Like Love', 'Wrap My Words Around You' and 'The Way'. Like its predecessor, 'Second First Impression' also made some bold -- and from the outside, seemingly reckless -- lyrical commitments. "I love putting out really vulnerable music that could just bite me on the ass," Daniel laughs. "There’s stuff in my music that I'd literally never tell my closest friend, and yet somehow it just feels right to put it into a song and tell the entire planet. It takes something that is ugly within yourself, some base instinct, or a pain that is really deep and you, and then it permits all that to enter the public consciousness. For me it's an almost spiritual experience.

"Most music these days has lost its power. Music has lost its force, its meaning, its direction. I wasn't going to let that happen to me. I feel the album reaches some places the last one didn't and that maybe my songwriting jumped forward with 'The Way' and 'Sorry'. I would never have been able to write those songs before."

Daniel showcased the songs over the summer when he took to the road for another full-scale UK tour before heading back into the studio to work on even more new songs.

October 2005.

ENDS

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