Bio

Emma has performed music professionally since 1985. Concerts and tours include Sheryl Crow, Crowded House, Dave Dobbyn, Big Day Out, Strawberry Fields, Mountain Rock, ’97 Japan record promotional tour including TV and radio performances, various TVNZ performances.

Born January 1968 in her hometown Whakatane named by her ancestress, Wairaka, Emma got her first guitar aged eight and started piano lessons. She first recorded at age 19 in 1987 a song called 'Wanea Ngakau' (Deep Emotion) that four years later was favoured by student and Maori radio. Then her single 'System Virtue' cleaned up at the 1993 New Zealand Music Awards winning Best Songwriter, Most Promising Female Vocalist and Best Video, as well as Best Music Video at the Flying Fish Awards and NZ TV & Film Awards that year.

The video was also the most played New Zealand video of 1994. Her single 'Greenstone', produced by Neil Finn, charted to #5 on the New Zealand Charts and won her a nomination for Best Female Vocalist in the 1994 New Zealand Music Awards.

Her debut album 'Oxygen Of Love', produced by Crowded House and Supertramp’s Mark Hart, released in 1996 reached Gold status in New Zealand. The album gained Emma a second nomination for Best Female Vocalist and also Best Album in the Entertainer of the Year Awards in 1996, with her winning the Mana Maori Award.

In 2003 she colaborated with Heartmusic Ltd and from this process three songs Solid Love, Stand Alone and Century Sky were produced with three different mixes.