Acquaint yourself with Faouzia, Winnipeg's next big music export

Watch Faouzia perform Closed Door live at CBC in the video above.

She just won an international songwriting competition, has a single in regular rotation on Canadian airwaves and is giving herself two months to make the next big thing happen in her career.

Faouzia is only 16 and has already established herself as a major talent with the extremely catchy pop single,Knock On My Door, and the award-winning folk track The Sound she co-wrote with Matt Epp.

It was just over a year ago thatFaouzia was approached by artist management company Pipe & Hat Music Group after a Festival du Voyageur performance and she considered changing her full-time hobby into a career.

"I was very surprised because, at the time, I think I was 15 years oldand these two people had approached me that wanted to work with me and wanted to manage me and the concept had never really entered my mind," said Faouzia, who goes to school in Carman, Man., a town of about 3,000 people. "Tim Jones from Pipe & Hat had heard about me a month before he came to my show at Festival. He was somewhere, not in Manitoba,and he booked his flight [back] early to see the show."

A YouTube cover of an Adele track caught the company's attention, she said.

Before that, she "would perform locally at small festivals and small talent shows all around Carman and Notre Dame and sometimes in Winnipeg if I got really lucky."

'Something big'

The Moroccan-born phenom writes her own music and performs in French and English something she doesn't plan to change.

"Ever since I was four or five, I've been writing songs. My mom actually has a paper with the first song I ever wrote on it. She has it somewhere stashed, hidden," she said. "I love, love, love writing."

Writing, rehearsing, performing and building a career is Faouzia's full-time job, but she's already a full-time high school student.

"It's very time-consuming, and there's a lot of organization that has to take place for me to be able to sing and be a high school student," she said."I can focus on music this summer. I can focus on writing."

Days after her last class, she's prepping for a set at the Winnipeg International Jazz Festival and giving herself two months (her school summer break) to chalk up her next big win.

"I'm really hoping that by the end of the summer, my music career has taken a step forward," she said."I have two months ahead of me. I hope that, by the end of the summer, I have something big that has happened."

Faouzia's booked to perform with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for the Canada Day 150 celebration at The Forks on July 1 and at the Canada Summer Games in August.

She hopes to have a new single out in the near future.

See Faouzia live at the Winnipeg International Jazz Festival on Saturday, June 17, at 9:15 p.m.