VIDEO: 'Sugababe' flies in to open music teacher's new studio

Thursday 04 August 2016

She wasn't pushing any buttons, but former 'Sugababe' Heidi Range did fly in to help cut the ribbon at her old singing teacher's new studio in town.

Heidi was one of Leila Begg's first students at her music school in Liverpool nearly 20 years ago.

Heidi, who went on to join the chart-topping girl band, helped officially open the Progressive School of Music's second studio in town, on the corner of Cattle Street and said she was impressed by the facilities available to young singers in the Island.

Heidi said: "Make the most of all these facilities, when I first started I didn't have all these. When Leila started teaching me it was in a little back room in the upstairs of her house with a little keyboard so use all this equipment so use all this equipment and just have confidence. You've got to be determined, that's one thing that I was. I definitely believed in myself and wouldn't take no for an answer. Whatever CD I bought I was always reading the back to see what management company they were signed to and record companies and sending my demos."

Leila said she’d always planned to open a second studio and was keen to find the right location: “Because we do musical theatre now with drama and acting and movement, we needed a bigger space.

“We can make up a mini stage, which is what we have in St Ouen as well so they can really get a feeling of performing.

“We literally couldn’t take one more student in St Ouen we were so full but opening here has enabled us to double the amount of students.”

Leila says she’s seen a lot of talented students go through her school but knew she’d got a star in the making when she met Heidi who since leaving the Sugababes has been doing some theatre in the West End and is now keen to get into acting.

Leila said: “You need the drive and ambition and you need to be a certain personality I think to make it because it’s a tough business but you also have to have the talent and it’s rare you get both and Heidi had both. She was a tiger from being tiny, she was determined she was going to do it.”