**Sienna Storm, Lucian McDermott and Vince Harder at the red bull recording studios recording Sienna’s two originals in connection with Play It Strange.**

Budding young musician Sienna Storm* is already racking up a fair amount of music industry experience and has released two of her own compositions ‘Autumn Leaves’ and ‘Losing Faith’.

By Chris Marshall

“It's really cool to hear my own songs played back to me. Feels like it's come true you know.”

The Taupō-nui-a-Tia College Year 9 student has recorded the two original songs via the Play It Strange national song writing competitions and also has two covers on Spotify.

Sienna entered both the 2025 Play It Strange Junior Songwriting Competition (Yr 9 to 11) and the National Songwriting Competition (Yr 9-13) and was one of a number of finalists to have their songs recorded professionally.

She is keen to work with recording artist and producer Vince Harder.

“He did my covers and they were just absolutely amazing and he's really incredible and we thought that it would be pretty awesome… and they've turned out amazing so thanks to him for that.”

She also roped in Taupō’s Lucian McDermott of Sonorous to play on the two originals.

“He’s incredible on the guitar.”

While she has been playing guitar herself for about three years, singing has always been her “thing”, starting properly when she joined Carol and David Wall’s music classes in 2019.

As well as the more glamorous competitions and shows like ‘5 minutes of Fame’ (where Sienna as a Hilltop Primary School student first met Harder), she’s put in time busking, played markets, Kinstock, Dinner at the Lake, the Ironman Volunteers Dinner and also done some singing with Sonorous at the Cosmopolitan Club.

This year she entered Smokefree Rockquest and is looking to do so again next year, possibly both as a solo artist and in a band.

But she’s not getting ahead of herself in thinking that music is the only possible career.

“I really enjoy doing live performances and writing my own music. I guess we'll just have to see where it goes – what I do. I'm very passionate about it. It's always been something that I love.”

A recent live performance on LakeFM will see the station add her to its playlist, though she’s not expecting a lot of money to be rolling in just yet.

**Sienna (right) meets one of her favourite singers Lauren Spencer Smith.**

She has been compared to Billie Eilish… “I was actually very excited about that because I love Billie Eilish.” And has sung to a couple of her idols, Lauren Spencer Smith and Benson Boone, while attending their concerts.

She recommends performing to other teenagers.

“If you love it then just do it. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, it's just awesome to do what you want and just keep going… The confidence builds up. I was really shy at the beginning. It takes time but it's worth it.

She’s already looking ahead to the Play It Strange competition next year and even has a song in mind for one of the categories, but for now the next gig is singing at the college’s upcoming junior prizegiving.

And maybe she will then get back into some busking over the summer.

*Sienna Storm is Sienna Stewart’s stage name.