In the two months since winning the Maltese national selection with the song My Dream, Thea Garrett has celebrated a milestone birthday, put the final touches to the studio version of the song, and embarked upon some widespread promotional activity throughout Europe, eurovision.tv reported yesterday.

Thea herself admits that she didn’t have any expectation about winning the Go Malta Eurosong 2010 competition, because she felt that as a newcomer who was participating for the first time she had not much chance of success. As history shows, the professional juries and the Maltese televoting public completely disagreed with that and awarded Thea a landslide victory, and with it the chance to represent her nation in the Eurovision Song Contest 2010 in Oslo.

Thea is one of the youngest performers who will take to the stage in Norway this year, and since her successful debut in the festival, she celebrated her 18th birthday in March. For someone so young, Thea has already enjoyed a wealth of experience in the music world. This includes being a member of a gospel classical choir in Malta, a musical theatre student and also a vocal coaching student in the United Kingdom at the Sylvia Young Theatre School.

A valuable experience more recently for Thea was the opportunity to sing with Italian star Gigi D’Alessio on his world tour. During the concert Gigi accompanied Thea on the piano when she sang one of his own songs.

In April Thea started a promotional tour in the lead up to Oslo. First stop was Slovakia where she appeared on a number of popular shows and sang My Dream. As with a number of other promo tours however, Thea was held up due to the flight restrictions imposed due to the recent Icelandic volcano eruption. Thea and her team were stranded in Germany on the way home from Slovakia and endured a 17-hour trip by rail from Frankfurt to Rome before taking a flight back to Malta. This has led to the Maltese team pulling out of the Dutch event this weekend. Next stop on the promo tour is Belgium where Thea will again attend popular TV shows and give interviews to the media.

Thea has recorded the final version of My Dream and released the CD single, which also includes a Maltese language version of the song. Thea has listened to the other entries she will be competing against in Oslo and said that her favourite songs are those of Norway and Denmark.

Malta will take part in the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2010 on Tuesday 25 May.