Sahara Stanton perches in a plastic chair in the music suite at Cambridge High School, preparing to perform her original song, Dracula, for The News.
Cambridge High School’s 2025 Ritchie Pickett Scholarship winner, Sahara Stanton. Photo: Steph Bell-Jenkins
“I should have taken my nail polish off,” the Ohaupo teenager says, fanning out her fingers across the neck of her acoustic guitar. “It’s chipped.”
Blood-red varnish recedes from her nail tips.
But beneath that imperfect paint job lies a wealth of talent.
Sahara, 17, is the 2025 winner of Cambridge High School’s Ritchie Pickett Scholarship, awarded annually to encourage and support an outstanding music student.
Pickett was described by New Zealand Musician magazine as one of Aotearoa’s “kings of country rock”. He was born in Morrinsville in 1955 and died in his Cambridge home in 2011.
Sahara, who is in year 13, plans to put the $1000 prize money towards a tertiary qualification. She would love to study at Victoria University next year, possibly teaming a music major with courses in journalism or communication.
“If it was a perfect world I would like to study abroad and compose music for films and games, and if it was a more perfect world I would just be writing my own songs and making a living off that,” she said.
The year 13 student grew up with music all around. Her father Ben is a “brilliant saxophonist”, her mother Madelyn plays piano, her maternal grandfather Nelson is a rock fanatic, and her extended family have been worship leaders at Arise Church in Hamilton for generations.
She has a five-year-old sister, Shaya, who “also has the musical gift” and an 18-year-old sister, Kaela.
“She’s gone to uni to study astrophysics,” Sahara said.
“She’s brilliant. She’s the funniest person and I know and she’s my best friend. She’s academic and I’m artsy.”
Today, in the music room, as Sahara’s dextrous fingers begin their rhythmic dance across the fretboard, the haunting melody of her original song, Dracula – which won first place in the solo/duo section of this year’s Waikato Rockquest – resonates with talent.
Sahara says melodies just flow out of her.
“I don’t have to think about it at all; they just come to me.
“With the lyrics, sometimes I get into a state where it does just come out, and then sometimes it’s like a puzzle and I have to sit down for like, days, just trying to figure out a line. But once I crack it, it’s really satisfying.”
She has written 16 songs since she inherited a guitar from her uncle as a nine-year-old and discovered her passion for singing and playing.
Of all the pieces she’s created, Dracula is her favourite. She wrote it after joining a social football team, watching a friend play, and feeling deeply inspired by – and envious of – his sheer skill.
That feeling morphed into a composition about being able to control a storm, and “spiralled into this song about loving someone but also being jealous of them and wanting to become them”.
“I’m a very in-the-moment person,” Sahara said.
“I write the best when I get a really intense feeling, and then I just I just try and translate that into the instrument and into the melody and into the lyrics.
“I think I’m just a very sensitive person, and I’m sentimental. So I hold onto things. I’m very mood-swingy, and I really want to capture moments and feelings; that’s important to me.
“And music is my greatest form of communication. Sometimes it’s better than words for me.”
A huge fan of New Zealand singer and songwriter Julia Deans, Sahara says her own songs are “usually pretty dark”.
“I guess I listen to a lot of that stuff, like Radiohead and Adrianne Lenker,” she said. “Her songs aren’t too dark, but they’re always really melancholy.
“I have a good life. I have a really loving family and I have great friends and I’m in a really good situation; I’m really blessed to be where I am. But I guess I like writing about dark stuff because it’s really deep and there’s a lot of good words you can use to describe horrible things.”
She laughs. “And I guess I’m just an angsty teenager, so it’ll come out.”
Her blood-red nail polish is a nod to that.
If she had her way, she’d ditch the monotones of her school uniform in a heartbeat, in favour of purple tights, short shorts and a band t-shirt – or something with a vintage graphic.
“You know the movie Twilight? Something Bella Swan would wear,” she said.
For Sahara, creative expression is a compulsion – one that might just propel her to stardom.
“I’d love to pursue music as a career,” she said.
“I know how difficult it is – you’ve got to be really good to crack it – so I’m just going to go hard.”
Cambridge High School’s 2025 Ritchie Pickett Scholarship winner, Sahara Stanton. Photo: Steph Bell-Jenkins
