Gwyneth Herbert (born 26 August 1981) is a British singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist and record producer. Initially known for her interpretation of jazz and swing jazz standard, she is now established as a writer of original compositions, including musical theatre. She has been described as "an exquisite wordsmith"
Three of her seven albums have received four-starred reviews in the British national press. Another album, Between Me and the Wardrobe, received a five-starred review in The Observer. Her seventh album, Letters I Haven't Written, was released in October 2018.
Early life and education
Born in Wimbledon, London,
to Mary and Brian Herbert, she was brought up in
Surrey and
Hampshire in the south of England.
She began playing the piano at the age of three
and was writing basic songs at the age of five.
She also learned the
French horn, achieving Grade 8 by the age of 15.
Throughout her teenage years she played music with local orchestras and bands such as the
Youth orchestra and also briefly formed a short-lived
punk rock band. At 14 she recorded a
demo tape of her own songs at Trinity Studios,
Woking; however, despite music industry interest, she chose to continue with her studies.
Herbert went to Glebelands School in Cranleigh, Surrey[ Gwyneth Herbert attended St Chad's College from 1999 to 2002 and obtained a BA (Hons) in English Literature.] she met up with fellow student Will Rutter
Professional career
First Songs
After leaving university, Herbert and Rutter moved to London,
where they soon met a former member of
Boney M who had been asked to judge a forthcoming Polish television music competition. As Black Coffee, they were invited to enter, and won the competition.
Returning to London, Black Coffee continued to perform in local bars, before being introduced to Ian Shaw, a noted jazz vocalist. This led eventually to the production of a debut CD,
First Songs, initially credited to "Gwyn and Will",
of both original songs and
jazz standards, which was launched at London's PizzaExpress Jazz Club in September 2003.
The Herbert/Rutter song "Sweet Insomnia" featured guest vocals from
Jamie Cullum.
Described by
BBC Music's reviewer as "a lovingly crafted debut",
the album received a significant amount of radio airplay on Jazz FM and BBC Radio 2, and was promoted by Michael Parkinson.
Bittersweet and Blue
Soon after, Herbert was signed to the Universal Classics and Jazz label and released, in September 2004,
her first major label album,
Bittersweet and Blue. This comprised mainly
jazz standards, but also included three original tracks by Herbert and Rutter. Herbert's version of
Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", taken from this album, was featured on the soundtrack of
romantic comedy Leap Year, directed by
Anand Tucker and starring
Amy Adams and
Matthew Goode. John Fordham, in a four-starred review of the album for
The Guardian, praised Herbert's "precociously powerful chemistry of taste and meticulous care for every sound – from a whisper to an exhortation".
Between Me and the Wardrobe
Herbert left Universal Classics and Jazz to pursue a less commercial and more personal musical direction
and then self-financed a project in which she collaborated with Polar Bear's
Seb Rochford in a production role.
, an album of self-penned songs,
was recorded in three days and was never intended for general release.
The album was initially made available, in 2006, on Herbert's own Monkeywood label before being picked up by Blue Note Records, making Herbert their first UK signing in 30 years.
In a five-starred review, Stuart Nicholson of
The Observer said that on this album she "lets the lyrics do the work for her. They are well thought out, moving between artfully constructed soft-focus simplicities to poignant yearning".
Ten Lives and All the Ghosts
In early 2008, Herbert was commissioned by a collaborative project between
Peter Gabriel and Bowers & Wilkins to record an acoustic album at Gabriel's Real World Studios. The result of these sessions,
Ten Lives, was released as a
Music download in July 2008, available only from the Bowers & Wilkins website as part of their Music Club.
Remixed versions of these songs were to form the basis of Herbert's album All the Ghosts:
Clangers and Mash
In October 2009, Herbert returned to Harder Sound Studio to record the song "Perfect Fit" which she gave away as a free download, available exclusively from Naim Edge. It was also released as a single on 7 March 2011.
The track was also one of nine tracks on her
extended play Clangers and Mash, released on 1 November 2010,
which included remixes, by
Seb Rochford of Polar Bear, of some of her previously published songs.
In a four-starred review for The Guardian, John Fordham described it as a "fascinating set of variations on the familiar for Herbert regulars, or an appealing introduction for jazz-averse newcomers", saying that although her songs had been radically transformed, "Herbert's unfussy soulfulness and personal vision always glow through".
The Sea Cabinet
In January 2010, Herbert was commissioned by
Snape Maltings as artist-in-residence to write, record and perform a new body of work based on stories of the sea.
This was performed in October 2010 at Snape Maltings.
An album of this music,
The Sea Cabinet, was released in May 2013 and launched in a series of concerts from 23 to 26 May at Wilton's Music Hall in London's East End. In a review of the album launch,
The Guardian's jazz critic John Fordham said that "Herbert's imaginative narrative, and her casually commanding voice – whether softly nuanced as confiding speech or at full soaring-contralto stretch – were the central characters in an entertaining and often moving show that opens a new chapter in her creative story".
Michal Boncza, in a review for the
Morning Star of musical performances in 2013, described it as a "stand-out", admiring "a voice that can effortlessly render any emotion with commanding ease. Every song is an impressively crafted and engrossing vignette of life's more difficult moments and they grab the attention time and again".
The Financial Times' four-starred review called it "a concept album about the debt British history owes to the sea".
Commenting on her live performance in July 2013 at the Love Supreme Jazz Festival in Glynde Place, East Sussex, Nick Hasted of The Independent said: "Gwyneth Herbert sings the shanties on her The Sea Cabinet album with happy, cabaret sensuality, detailing a relationship’s shipwrecked, sunken past in 'I Still Hear The Bells'".
In a performance described as "mesmerising"
Letters I Haven't Written
Letters I Haven't Written, her seventh album,
was released on 12 October 2018.
It was produced at Rockfield Studios,
Monmouth and, like Herbert's previous album
The Sea Cabinet, was
crowdfunding.
The songs on the album, all written by Herbert, have been described as "exquisitely crafted".
On the subjects of "love, gratitude and protest",
they are about the lost art of letter writing.
Reviewing the album for
Jazzwise magazine, Peter Quinn said that "Letters I Haven't Written is by turns moving, thrilling and entrancing".
The A–Z of Mrs P
In 2010, Herbert won the Stiles and
Anthony Drewe Song of the Year Award with her composition "Lovely London Town", from a musical she wrote with playwright
Diane Samuels.
The musical,
The A–Z of Mrs P, tells the story of
Phyllis Pearsall's creation of the London
A–Z Street Atlas.
It was performed in workshop with actress
Sophie Thompson in May 2011 and opened at Southwark Playhouse on 21 February 2014
starring
Peep Show actress
Isy Suttie.
The show's original cast recording, which includes a bonus track sung by Herbert, was released in March 2014.
[
]
Springtime for Henry (and Barbara)
At Site Gallery, the contemporary art space in Sheffield, Gwyneth Herbert and the artist Mel Brimfield explored an imagined relationship between the sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth in Barbara and Henry – The Musical, which ran from 18 November to 13 December 2014.
The Snow Queen, A Christmas Carol and The Nutcracker
In December 2016 and January 2017 she performed in, and was composer, lyricist and musical director for, a musical production at Bristol Old Vic of Hans Christian Andersen's story The Snow Queen, directed by Lee Lyford. The Guardian's reviewer, Lyn Gardner, praised "Gwyneth Herbert’s delightful songs and their deadpan wit".
She returned to Bristol Old Vic in December 2018 as a performer, composer, lyricist and musical director for a musical production of the Charles Dickens story A Christmas Carol, also directed by Lee Lyford, which received a five-starred rating from the Bristol Post.
She was composer/lyricist for Bristol Old Vic's The Nutcracker, which opened on 24 November 2022 and ran until 7 January 2023.
Other musicals and compositions
In April 2012, Gwyneth Herbert's one-act musical Before the Law, co-written with Christine Denniston and adapted from Peter Barnes' A Hand Witch of the Second Stage, received a Special Commendation at the inaugural Sidney Brown Memorial Award (now called the S & S Award) for the best new unproduced musical of the year,
Herbert was the composer and sound designer for a play by Diane Samuels, Poppy + George, which was performed at Watford Palace Theatre in February 2016.
Herbert composed music for Le Tabou, a full two-act musical theatre piece based on the surrealist novel Froth on the Daydream and the life of its author Boris Vian, written by Kath Burlinson and performed by Youth Music Theatre UK at the Barbican Theatre, Plymouth in August 2013.
Her songs have been covered by other artists. "Not the Kind of Girl", a song that Herbert wrote for a screening of the 1928 film The Patsy at the Birds Eye View film festival at the BFI, was included by Ian Shaw on his 2017 album Shine Sister Shine.
In 2017, Herbert wrote the song "Boxed Up Broken Heart" for actress Jasmine Armfield to perform in the BBC television programme EastEnders, in her role as Bex Fowler.
Other work
In 2016 she was one of the judges for the BBC Young Musician Jazz Awards.
Performances
In March 2010, Herbert performed a newly commissioned score for Marion Davies’ 1928 Silent film The Patsy, at BFI Southbank's Birds Eye View Film Festival.
In 2012, Herbert joined forces with members of the Buck Clayton Legacy Band to explore, in a series of concerts and talks, the jazz repertoire of Peggy Lee.
In 2014, she collaborated with artist Mel Brimfield in presenting The Palace That Joan Built,
In 2015, as part of the London Sinfonietta’s Notes to the New Government concert, which expressed composers' hopes for the future of society following Britain's general election, she performed a new song, "Tick Tock", described by The Guardian as "gloriously done, inveighing against educational conformity".
In autumn 2017 she and her band previewed a new touring show and forthcoming album, Letters I Haven't Written.
Broadcasts
Gwyneth Herbert talked to Claire Martin about her album Bittersweet and Blue on BBC Radio 3's Jazz Line-Up on 12 February 2005
On 1 February 2008, in a broadcast for BBC Radio 3's Jazz Library, she joined the programme's presenter Alyn Shipton to discuss the recordings of Ella Fitzgerald.
In 2010, 2011 and 2013 she and Thomas Guthrie sang in The Playlist, a series of BBC Radio 4 broadcasts recreating the previously unknown musical lives of famous figures from the past, discovering and recording their favourite songs – including songs they themselves had composed.
Recordings
Gwyneth Herbert has appeared on other artists' albums. She is featured on the track "A Day In The Life Of A Fool" on Konishi Yasuharu's 2011 album One and Ten Very Sad Songs – Konishi Yasuharu Is Pizzicato One (Universal Music). She provided "vocal theremin" on the track "C.H.A.O.S. ( The Third version)" on Bourgeois & Maurice's 2013 album The Third. She also produced this track and three others on the album, co-producing a fifth track with Ben Humphreys.
On Janette Mason's 2014 album D'Ranged she took lead vocals on two tracks – the Alison Moyet song "This House" and Paul Weller's "Stanley Road".
Production
Herbert is also a record producer. She produced Frances Ruffelle's album, I Say Yeh-Yeh, released on 9 October 2015
Performance
Gwyneth Herbert has been described as a "sophisticated jazz-ballad artist"
Discography
Gwyneth Herbert and Will Rutter
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| First Songs | 27 October 2003 | Dean Street Records (CD: DNSTCD2002); Universal Music Classics & Jazz (CD/LP: 9866620) |
Gwyneth Herbert
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| Bittersweet and Blue | 27 September 2004 | Universal Records (CD: 9867896) | Several of the tracks subsequently appeared on compilation albums. |
| Between Me and the Wardrobe | 2006 | Monkeywood Records (MONKEYWOOD01) | |
| Between Me and the Wardrobe (reissue) | 20 August 2007 | Blue Note Records/ EMI Latin (CD: 5032582) | |
| Ten Lives (digital download) | 18 July 2008 | Real World Records/ Bowers & Wilkins Music Club | Remixed versions of the songs on this album, all written by Herbert, formed the basis of her next album, All the Ghosts. |
| All the Ghosts | 13 July 2009 (CD); | Naim Edge (CD: NAIMCD135); (LP: NAIMLP145) | The track "Somedays I Forget" was included on Best Of British And Beyond, a various artists' compilation. This was issued as a covermount CD with Jazzwise magazine's 162nd issue in April 2012 and was also released by Naim Edge (CD: NAJW02). |
| The Sea Cabinet | 20 May 2013 | Monkeywood Records (MONKEYWOOD02) | |
| Letters I Haven't Written | 5 October 2018 | Monkeywood Records (MONKEYWOOD03) |
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| Clangers and Mash | 1 November 2010 | Naim Edge (CD: NAIMCD137) | Includes the song "Perfect Fit" |
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| "Perfect Fit" | 7 March 2011 | Naim Edge | The song also appears on her 2010 album Clangers and Mash |
| "You're Welcome" | 1 October 2018 | Monkeywood Records | The song also appears on her 2018 album Letters I Haven't Written |
Various artists
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| The Music of BB Cooper: Featuring the Best in British Vocal Jazz | 2004 | Artfield (ART001) | Produced and arranged by Ian Shaw, the album features music by BB Cooper with songs performed by various artists. Gwyneth Herbert performs "Love Has Got A Sting In Its Tail" (BB Cooper/Stephen Clark) and "Pour Maintenant" (word and music by BB Cooper). |
| Heart of Mine: Songs of Ross Lorraine | 2022 | Ross Lorraine Records (RLR001) | Co-produced by Claire Martin, Ross Lorraine and Chris Travers, the album features songs by composer and pianist Ross Lorraine. Gwyneth Herbert takes lead vocals on two songs, "Play On" and "They're Playing our Song", and provides backing vocals on the other tracks. |
The A–Z of Mrs P Original London Cast
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| The A–Z of Mrs P | 24 March 2014 | SimG Productions
(CD: SimGR-CD022) | All the songs on the album were written by Gwyneth Herbert and 18 of them are cast recording. On a 19th, bonus track, Gwyneth Herbert performs "Nothing Much to Say". |
Janette Mason
|
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| D'Ranged | 4 August 2014 | Fireball Records (FMJP 10004) | Gwyneth Herbert sings on two tracks: "This House" (Alison Moyet) and "You Do Something To Me" (Paul Weller) |
Personal life
Gwyneth Herbert lives in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.
External links
