Tara Mathew

Tara Mathew has always been a gifted singer and during her teenage years won a number of respected music awards including 'Most Outstanding Jazz Soloist' as well as performing nationally on radio and TV on many occasions. She also represented the government as Canada’s Musical Ambassador, which led to her singing at many official government functions including performing in Mexico at a major trade mission. The highlight of her early career was being chosen to sing the opening song to the ‘97 Canada Games and she also joined many leading artists when she sang at the Pan-Am Games, which was opened by Celine Dion.

She graduated with a Bmus in Applied Voice from Brandon, one of Canada's premier universities of music, with one of the highest marks awarded for voice in over 30 years and was offered a place at the Salzburg Mozarteum in Austria, for which only 20 vocalists are selected worldwide each year. Tara had a glittering career ahead, but in 2001 she felt called to help others and traded it all in for missionary service. And for the next 5 years she was to live in India working with homeless and victims of AIDS & Leprosy. Music was never far away and Tara soon made use of her vocal talent as part of her mission work. Then in 2006 she was seen singing at an outreach event in Bangalore and was asked to perform at Gloria Deo. Gloria Deo is India's (and Asia’s!) biggest televised live Christmas concert that is broadcast virtually worldwide and that Christmas, she shared the stage with a line-up of international performers and Bollywood stars.

Following this, in 2007 she returned to Canada with her husband Jim, who she had met in India and their young daughter, Natasha, but to her surprise it wasn't long before she would return to perform in India again.

UK songwriter/producer, Kevin Wilson had been booked to perform at the 2007 Gloria Deo shows in Bangalore, Trivandrum & Sri-Lanka, but unexpectedly his lead singer had to pull out just before the dates. Following an amazing and complex string of events, Tara was introduced to him and became his new lead singer. Following the success of the shows, they formed a musical partnership and Tara signed to Kevin's Devon based production company and record label, Media Ministries. Work on an album had begun, but they were again booked for the 2008 Gloria Deo shows (this time taking place in Germany, India and Nepal) with a specific request for one of the songs that they had performed the previous year. The song was called Christmas Present and it had special memories as over 5,000 people had joined in on the choruses at its very first public performance, so it was decided to record this for Christmas 2008.

For more information, visit Tara Mathew's site