It happens in the movies, it happens in dreams but it never happens in real life. Teenage girls simply don’t sing a couple of songs over a tinny karaoke tape, get plucked from the slush pile and signed up by the most successful composer of musicals alive.

Unless you’re Andrea Ross.

The 15-year-old from Boston, Massachusetts has been signed by Andrew Lloyd Webber who has produced her debut album, “Moon River”, which will be released by Universal Classics and Jazz in March 2007.

‘I first heard Andrea singing when she sent me her music via the internet,” says Andrew Lloyd Webber. “She was just 13 and I immediately invited her to perform at my Sydmonton Arts Festival, where she delighted the audience and was subsequently signed by Universal.  Andrea is still only 15 and it is going to be great to see her develop, as she has enormous potential to become a very big artist.’

As well as being the creator of epoch-defining musicals like Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Starlight Express and The Woman in White, Lloyd Webber certainly knows how to pick great female singers from nowhere. Think of Elaine Paige, Sarah Brightman, Julie Covington and the delightful Connie Fisher who is currently starring as Maria in The Sound of Music.

Andrea Ross may eclipse them all. She has the necessary gifts in abundance – she’s a superb natural actress with a commanding, vivid stage presence and a pure, powerful soprano voice. But she’s also got that spine-tingling something, call it the ‘X-factor’ if you must, that lifts the special out from the merely excellent. Watch her sing and she inhabits the soul of the song, articulating emotions she has no right to understand, and throughout it all, she smiles. She’s happy to sing, and the rest of us are happy to listen.

Andrea jokes that she’s been acting since the moment she was born. Father Bill, a plastics engineer, and mom Paula, who works for a medical device company, are somewhat bemused by their only child’s prodigious talent.  “As a child we tried to give her good exposure to all kinds of music” says Paula, “But she’s the one driving this. She always has been.”

She was born on April 8th, 1991, a classic American mixture of everything.  “My mom is Mediterranean - Greek, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian, plus a little Russian - and my dad is Irish, Scottish, English and Swedish.  I’ve got a little bit of both of them - my mom’s skin, my dad’s little Scottish nose.  I was baptised a Catholic and my mom is Greek Orthodox so we’ve always tried to meet in the middle”.   It’s a huge extended family, Andrea has ten uncles and aunts and is always surrounded by her cousins.

Her musical career began when she started playing the glockenspiel in an after school class. While she dabbled in sports and art she could never get enough singing and dancing. She sang along with tapes, knew every word of The Lion King and was inexorably drawn to musical theatre.

 “When I was seven and eight I was obsessed with Cats,” says Andrea. “It was my favourite musical - I saw it on tour in Boston. I dressed as a cat for Halloween. I wore my cat costume with my friend – we used to watch the movie all the time and act out scenes from it. My first ever audition song was ‘Memory’ from Cats.

“In Third Grade teachers asked everybody what we wanted to be when we grew up. I had three answers – a marine biologist, an artist and a singer. I’m afraid of seaweed and I only draw stick figures but I knew then all I wanted to do was sing. My parents have always told me tell us when you want to stop, and we’ll help you do something completely different.”

Aged eight she played Marta in The Sound of Music at a local community theatre and soon started talking about getting an agent.  “She was ten and she wanted to go on Broadway,” laughs Paula. “I told her, ‘Andrea you have no clue. You just don’t show up and get on Broadway. You can get an agent when you’re 18.’” Being level-headed parents they decided to let her audition for local productions. “It’s fun to be on stage but if you can’t survive the audition process you can’t do this.”

Andrea didn’t just survive, she flourished. She won her first professional lead role in Tuck Everlasting at the Wheelock Family Theatre in Boston at aged 10. “I didn’t think I would even get through to a call back. That set it off and it’s been a whirlwind ever since.”  She followed that up playing Annie, Young Lizzie in Lizzie Borden, Sara in A Little Princess, Fredrika in A Little Night Music (her personal favourite), Liesl in The Sound of Music, and the title role in the drama Ramona Quimby.

Those last three performances saw her become the youngest person to win best actress in the local Elliot Norton Awards.  Her directors praised her “inner light” and “fabulous singing voice”. For Andrea, it was a labour of love.  “If I take that much time off from doing a show I go crazy. I have to be doing it – I love it.

In November 2004 when Paula Ross was watching a VH1 TV program about stage mothers she noted the name of Aggie Gold, whose Long Island based Fresh Faces Agency handles child actors. She sent her Andrea’s demo and Aggie was on the phone straight away. “I’ve been in the business 30 years and I’ve not heard a voice like this,” says Gold. “I have clients on Broadway who have wonderful voices. Nobody compares.”

Although Andrea had fulfilled her ambition of getting an agent by 8th Grade her career was actually in danger of stalling. While her voice was pure and crystal clear it was too mature for younger parts and she looked far too young to play adult roles.

“I was hoping I would do some auditions in New York and maybe try TV too. I was waiting, and I didn’t think anything was going to happen until after high school.  When my agent said “We’re going to send your stuff to Andrew Lloyd Webber”, I was like “sure”.

Andrea picked two songs to send to Andrew Lloyd Weber. ‘Unexpected Song’ from Song and Dance and ‘Popular’ from Wicked. For backing tracks she used karaoke tapes, so tinny they were probably bootleg recordings, and sang over them in a local studio. “It wasn’t professional at all,” she admits, “but we didn’t really expect anything. So I forgot about it.”  Then she went back to playing Liesl in the The Sound of Music at the Wheelock Family Theatre.

Usually when tapes or email sound files arrive at the Really Useful Company in London they go into a system designed to weed out the bad and the ugly. Chances are even the good get missed. However Jan Eade, Andrew’s assistant, randomly decided to go through a selection of demos. She was knocked out by Andrea’s voice and told her boss about her. Several times. Eventually she cornered him and made him listen. “I want to meet this girl,” he said, “bring her out to Los Angeles when I’m there for the Oscars.”

Andrea got the call at 7 am just before she went to school. “Mom and I really went crazy,” she giggles, “I got in really late that day.” With a week left of the show, the director agreed to let her understudy take over. She prepared six songs and five days later flew out to LA with her backing tape, expecting a quick audition and a “thanks - we’ll be in touch” brush off.

“We met in the Presidential Suite at The Peninsula Hotel, which was bigger than my house. That was intimidating enough and then he introduced his music producer, Nigel Wright, who I knew from watching American Idol.  I’m like ‘Oh my God!’” says Andrea. “They’d also hired a pianist to play with me.  I ended up singing all six songs, and eating lunch with him, talking about my career and what he wanted to do with it. I was really nervous because I was eating a huge chicken Caesar salad that was bigger than my head while sitting next to Andrew Lloyd Weber”.

Lloyd Webber admitted he was in something of a quandary, telling Andrea, “Your voice is mature enough to sing love songs but it’s unusual for a 14 year-old to sing those sorts of lyrics”. Instead he suggested she come out to sing at his annual Sydmonton Festival that July, where he tries out new work in front of his friends from the music industry.

Andrea prepared a ten-song set for the recital. To go from musical theatre to a straight concert, where the entire onus was on her, was tough and hard on her voice. Tougher still was that the concert took place on July 8, 2005, the day after the London bombings – “it was a very emotional day for everyone”. Andrea got a standing ovation, and in the 30 years of the Festival, there have only been four others.

She signed to Universal Classics and Jazz and set about recording her debut album in the spring and summer of 2006 in London, with Andrew and Nigel Wright producing.  During the brainstorming for choice of material Andrea suggested Eva Cassidy’s ‘Songbird’. They steered clear of picking Lloyd Webber standards, settling on ‘Learn To Be Lonely’ from the The Phantom of the Opera movie soundtrack, two songs from Whistle Down The Wind, No Matter What and ‘All The Love I Have’ from The Beautiful Game.  Add in a delightful, modern take on ‘Moon River’ and stunning versions of ‘Popular’, ‘Heart Like A Wheel’ and ‘The Prayer’, and “Moon River” is a debut to be proud of.

Away from the theatre Andrea is a refreshingly normal teenage girl with all the slang, addicted to email, instant messaging and her mobile phone. She’s not obsessed with listening to show tunes, preferring Pop, R&B, Rock and even country music when she’s with her friends – “I’m still the same Andrea to them”. She attends a highly regarded ISL (Independent School League) day and boarding school south of Boston – “it was my choice“   - and gets very offended if her mom suggests her grades might be slipping.

There might be a boyfriend but certainly not if Paula is listening. She loves shopping, with her raids on Top Shop the envy of her friends back home. “I do a lot of shopping so mom gets mad at me,” she laughs. “I tell her I’m earning my own money now.”

Andrea’s a realist. She is determined to go to college and has set her sights high.  “My dream schools are Juilliard or RADA. I would die to go to one of them.  I know that I always want to be doing this.  I can’t think of anything else I would rather do.  It’s the only thing that I really, really love.

“When I sing it takes me somewhere else.”