French singer Barbara Weldens died Wednesday night after collapsing onstage during a performance.
The 35-year-old up-and-coming artist reportedly suffered cardiac arrest, though the BBC reports that police are investigating whetherWeldens may have been accidentally electrocuted. She had been performing at a local festival at a church in the village of Gourdon, France.
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Weldens, who grew up in the circus, released her first album Le Grand H de l’Hommeearlier this year, winning accolades and awards. In 2016 she won a young talent award at the Jacques Brel festival.
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Last year she told the Midi Libre newspaper, “I’ve always written poems, even when I was little. Then I took piano lessons as a teen. All I wanted to do was compose.”
In a statement published by People, the organizers of the Pic D’Or prize, which Weldens had won in 2016, said, “It was with great emotion that we learned this morning of the death of Barbara Weldens, our Pic d’Or 2016, at a concert last night in Gourdon in the Lot, obviously electrocuted. Our team is deeply disturbed by the brutal disappearance of the artist who had appeared on the stage of the Theater des Nouveaux on May 20th, during our last edition. A radiant woman, full of energy and talented, and of course we think of all her family and her loved ones.”