Music Industry News

From kapa haka stages and Bowl of Brooklands to 4,000+ Spotify streams on debut, Legacy Music Artist LaVee (Lavinia Winter) has earned every moment of what comes next. Here’s the story so far and why ‘When We Fell Apart‘ matters.

Long before she stepped into a recording studio, Lavinia was singing. She sang at whānau gatherings alongside her father and his band, learning what it meant to hold a room with nothing but her voice and her presence. She competed through kapa haka, honed her performance through school and community stages across Taranaki, and became a familiar and beloved face at one of the region’s most celebrated events, the Bowl of Brooklands for Taranaki’s Christmas in the Park.
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These weren’t stepping stones on the way to something else. They were the foundation. Over more than a decade of consistent live performance and competition, Lavinia was building the kind of stage presence that cannot be taught and cannot be faked. Grounded in whakapapa and cultural identity, she affiliates with Ngāti Ruanui and Te Ātiawa, with ancestral connections to Taranaki (te Maunga), Aotea (te Waka), and the Waitōtoroa and Tangāhoe awa. Her marae are Parihaka and Taiporohenui.

Her hapū includes Ngāti Moeahau and Hamua. The Winter, Campbell, and Tito whānau are central to everything she does. She doesn’t carry this lightly, it shows in how she performs and in every artistic choice she makes.
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Influenced by the legendary voices of Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Etta James, and Tina Turner, LaVee had spent years developing a sound that blends soulful power with genuine warmth. She doesn’t imitate these icons, she has absorbed their lesson, which is this: the voice serves the song, and the song serves the truth. Everything else is decoration.
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In early 2026, Legacy Music released LaVee’s debut digital single ‘I’m Rising‘, a statement of resilience, self-belief, and emergence. For many listeners, it was their first introduction to her voice.
The song captured something essential about who LaVee is as an artist: a performer who brings everything to the room, but whose power comes not from volume alone, it comes from natural talent. “I’m Rising’ is a statement of resilience, self-belief, and emergence, the beginning of LaVee’s recorded journey, and the start of something much bigger.” – Legacy Music, February 2026

The second single from LaVee arrives in May 2026 during NZ Music Month and it is not the same song as the first. Where ‘I’m Rising’ announced her arrival with defiance and self-belief, ‘;When We Fell Apart’ goes somewhere deeper. It is the other side of rising: the honest, uncomfortable space between the end of something and the beginning of what comes next.
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It is a song about sitting with the truth before you can move forward. And in LaVee’s hands, that emotional honesty becomes something remarkable, not heavy, but freeing. The kind of song that makes you feel less alone.
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Releasing during NZ Music Month is a deliberate choice. May is the annual moment when Aotearoa’s music industry, radio, streaming platforms, and media actively amplify homegrown voices. For a Legacy Music artist building her catalogue, there is no better window and no more fitting platform for a release that is so unmistakably, beautifully New Zealand. Streaming links for ‘When We Fell Apart’ are releasing soon. Follow LaVee across platforms and turn on notifications, you do not want to miss this one.
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Check out all things LaVee below:
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