Sol3 Mio, a singing trio from New Zealand, is made up of two brothers, Pene and Amitai Pati and their cousin, Moses Mackay.
The group originally formed to raise money to pay for training courses at the Wales International Academy Of Voice, but has been so successful that they released an album – ‘Sol3 Mio’.
Amitai Pati said one focus is broadening the audience for opera: “We were all known in New Zealand as individual opera singers and so we decided to incorporate a lot of popular music and things like that just to branch out and get as many people interested as possible. And so, in doing that, we’ve managed to grow our demographic from the more mature audience to now having people as young as seven-years-old at our shows. So we’re trying to aim at getting this opera music out there.. to as many people as possible, but also keeping the integrity of opera in there, as well as making it a lot more fun.”
His brother Pene, added: “The three of us have individual operatic parts, but what the public see on stage is a huge diverse performance. We start off with opera, move into musical theatre, we start doing R&B, we do the whole lot and then, on top of that, we’re playing instruments ourselves So when they see that whole thing roll out, that’s what kind of takes the audience by surprise. And the humour!”
The album Sol3 Mio went Platinum five times in New Zealand last year, making it the country’s best-selling album of 2013. It is set for release in the UK this autumn.
