Sarah Brightman to become first artist to perform live in space

10 March 2015, 16:38 | Updated: 10 March 2015, 16:39

Sarah Brightman is planning to become the first artist to perform live in space with a song by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The singer has been training since January, when she was given the green-light to be a spaceflight participant by the Russian Federal Space Agency. She plans to become the first artist to perform live on the International Space Station.

Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has written a song celebrating Sarah’s spaceflight.

At a press conference in London the singer said that she wanted to find “a song that suits the idea of space and something that's incredibly simple.”

“To sing in microgravity is very, very different thing to singing down here," she went on. "Here, you are grounded, you have the air around you. This is going to be very different.”

"I'm trying to find a piece that's beautiful and simple in its message, and not too complicated to sing. I don't want to say too much because of the complexities, but I'd like to connect with the choir or orchestra on earth."

The song by Lord Lloyd Webber will be included on Sarah Brightman's retrospective album, due to be released later this year.

Since the beginning of the year, Sarah has been undergoing intense training at Russia's Star City – the training camp for all astronauts heading to the ISS. Sarah plans to blast off from the Kazakhstan desert to the ISS in the Russian Soyuz on 1 September.

At the press conference she said: "When I was 9 years old, I watched the first man on the moon. It actually changed my perception about life. I never really talked about it as it could never be a reality, it was all very abstract. But it was always my ambition to fly to space.

"I now have the luck, I'm going up on the Russian Soyuz to the International Space Station. And if possible, I want others to take inspiration from my journey and chase their own dreams."