When Hetta Falzon bought a ticket to attend the Glastonbury Festival in June, little did she know she would be performing at the major event on the international music calendar – and on each of its five days.

The 17-year-old of Maltese descent will be performing at the world-renowned festival after being the youngest person ever to win the Pilton Stage worldwide competition.

“I had already bought a ticket for this year’s festival with my friends as it starts the day after my final A level exam,” she said.

“This was before I had a clue I could be performing, let alone that I will be daily.”

Falzon, who is from Somerset, England, secured herself a 30-minute set every single day of the five-day festival of contemporary performing arts that takes place in her hometown and is attended by over 200,000 people.

Leading pop and rock artists have headlined at what is also known as Glasto, alongside thousands of others appearing on smaller stages, while films and albums have been recorded at the festival, which receives extensive television and newspaper coverage.

In addition to contemporary music, the festival hosts dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts.

The last Glastonbury event was held in 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Falzon had attended it a few times, including the past two.

From a young age, she has been classically trained in piano, voice and cello.

At 11, however, she began songwriting, which she soon fell in love with and which became her main focus.

As an upper sixth form student at Wells Cathedral School, a specialist music school that has provided her with the knowledge and opportunities to further develop her songwriting, performing at Glastonbury was on her bucket list.

“Every musician has Glastonbury Festival on their bucket list,” she said.

“I feel so lucky to get to tick it off at such a young age with so little experience compared to a professional singer-songwriter and hope it is the first of many years performing at the festival.”

Falzon was up against 600 applications vying to perform at the Glastonbury Festival when she won this year’s Pilton Stage worldwide competition.

Her proud grandfather, Joe Falzon, originally from Mosta, told Times of Malta that she impressed the judges with her “accomplished compositions, beautiful melody and great lyrics presented in a mature and original way”.

The songwriter fought off tough competition in the heats and then triumphed in the final held recently.

Last year, Falzon also won the Song Academy Young Songwriter 2021 competition, in the category for songwriters aged 13-18 years old from the UK and Ireland, with her composition All it Takes.

She then went on to showcase her winning entry at The Tabernacle in Notting Hill, London, last September.

Falzon hopes that her performance at what is regarded as a major event in British culture – inspired by the ethos of the hippie, the counterculture of the 1960s and the free-festival movement – will lead to more festival and gig opportunities in future.

“However, the ultimate dream career is to be a songwriter and I would love it if writing opportunities were to come from this event.”

Her song can be heard on https://soundcloud.com/song_academy/all-it-takes-hetta-falzon.