Press release 3 February 2006
Second Tui for Independent New Zealand Artist Lorina Harding
Lorina Harding has picked up her second Tui, winning this year’s New Zealand Music Awards Best Folk Album of 2004/05 for
her second album Clean Break.
Lorina was Metro magazine’s pick for 20005’s Best NZ Female Solo Artist, writing: “The forty-something mum proves that
life experiences are intrinsic to coming up with the song-writing goods on her second album Clean Break. Puts the young
folk in their place.”
The awards were announced at the Auckland Folk Festival where Lorina Harding performed, bringing 15-year-old daughter
Hannah on-stage for a stand-out performance of their co-written song Exactly What To Say.
Lorina Harding previously won a NZ Music Awards Tui for Best Folk Album in 1992 for Lucky Damn Woman and was also a
finalist in the Most Promising Female Vocalist category in the same year.
Lorina is a truly gifted performer, songwriter and singer, with a distinctive and original sound of her own, uses
numerous open tunings of the blues structure while moving effortlessly to overlay jazz, country and folk sounds.
Lorina trained and worked as a physical actor in her native Canada before coming to New Zealand in 1988. After Real
Groovy Records released her Tui award winning first album, the signs were that she was, indeed, a Lucky Damn Woman. The
mystery of Lorina Harding is how someone with so much talent has hidden away for so long between albums (12 years). The
title Clean Break hints to the reasons for her sudden disappearance after a grueling marriage break-up and custody
battle in Auckland, to Dunedin then to Geraldine where she lives peacefully and happily today on an organic farm with
her partner growing flax seed oil.
Daughter Hannah (15) co-wrote and sings on the track Exactly What To Say - a close-to-home dissection of the
mother-daughter relationship - which was recorded for Clean Break. The album also features along with Pluto’s Milan
Borich and Michael Franklin Browne while Goldenhorse’s Ben King was a co-producer. Clean Break was released by Flaming
Pearl Records and is distributed by Global Routes Music.
She and her partner are busy organising four days of musical jamming and camaraderie and the 11th annual Waihi Bush
Festival on their South Canterbury property this weekend.
ENDS