Gwyneth Herbert

Early life and education

Born in Wimbledon, London, Herbert 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 Surrey County Youth Orchestra and also briefly formed a short-lived punk band called Wasted Minds. 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 and, for her sixth form studies, to Alton College in Hampshire, where her musical tastes moved more towards jazz music. While she was studying at St Chad's College, University of Durham, she met up with fellow student Will Rutter and together they began to write and perform in the cafés and bars of North East England as a jazz duo called Black Coffee.

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. She and Rutter were invited to enter, and Black Coffee 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 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. Between Me and the Wardrobe, 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 digital 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, which was released by Naim Edge in July 2009 in Europe to critical acclaim, including four-starred reviews from The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian; the album was released in the United States in June 2010. This album also featured two further recordings – including a cover version of David Bowie's "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" – by Robert Harder, who had previously collaborated with Herbert as recording engineer of Between Me and the Wardrobe. It was remastered for vinyl by Steve Rooke at Abbey Road Studios, London and reissued in LP format in 2010.

Clangers & 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 EP Clangers & 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". In a four-star review The Independent described it as a "cabinet of curiosities" with "a cabaret approach to storytelling, in rollicking sea shanties and waltzes", and "inventive" instrumentation "featuring wheezing accordions, warbling woodwind, tinkling music boxes and rolling bells". Alexander Varty, for Vancouver's The Georgia Straight, said that the album "blends Weimar cabaret and English music-hall stylings, with disquieting touches of avant-garde jazz".

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'".

The A–Z of Mrs P

In 2010, Herbert won the Stiles and 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 to 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.

This developed into the spoof musical Springtime for Henry (and Barbara), which was performed at Wilton's Music Hall in London's East End on 26 and 27 January 2016. It starred Frances Ruffelle as Hepworth and Andrew C. Wadsworth as Moore.

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, which is run by Mercury Musical Developments (MMD), the organisation that supports new musical theatre writing. It is the companion piece to After Lydia, a 30-minute one-act musical based on Terence Rattigan’s play of the same name, which was commissioned by Sounds of England and was also a collaboration with Christine Denniston. After Lydia was given a 45-minute reading at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London on Monday 14 March 2011, starring Rebecca Caine, Andrew C. Wadsworth, Simon Green and Daniel Fraser, with Stefan Bednarczyk as musical director. Directed by Maria Friedman, it also had a staged reading at the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, Berkshire in August 2012.

Herbert composed music for Le Tabou, a full two-act musical theatre piece, written by Kath Burlinson and performed by Youth Music Theatre at the Barbican Theatre, Plymouth in August 2013. She was the composer and sound designer for a play by Diane Samuels, Poppy + George, which was performed at Watford Palace Theatre in February 2016. 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. Herbert is also collaborating with Diane Samuels on writing a new musical about contraception, The Rhythm Method, which is in development at Watford Palace Theatre.

Her song "Boxed-up Broken Heart", sung by Jasmine Armfield in her role as as Bex Fowler in the BBC television programme EastEnders, was released as a single in 2017.

Performances

In March 2010, Herbert performed a newly commissioned score for Marion Davies’ 1928 silent comedy classic 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 July 2012, she performed, with BBC Radio 3 DJ Max Reinhardt and Paris-based singer China Moses, in a revue by Alex Webb which told the story of Café Society, New York’s first non-segregated nightclub. The show had a London Jazz Festival premiere at the Southbank Centre and a successful run at Kilburn's Tricycle Theatre.

In 2014, she collaborated with artist Mel Brimfield in presenting The Palace That Joan Built, a celebration of the centenary of Joan Littlewood's birth, as part of the London Underground's Art on the Underground programme. This included a live performance at Stratford Underground station.

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, inveigh[ing] against educational conformity". In January 2016 she and Frances Ruffelle performed a cabaret piece when Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall visited Wilton's Music Hall.

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 and was interviewed about her career on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour on 28 November 2007. On 13 December 2013, with Frances Ruffelle, Isy Suttie and Neil Marcus, she talked with Tom Service on his BBC Radio 3 programme Music Matters about the development of musical theatre and The A–Z of Mrs P.

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. On 23 March 2008 she joined Alyn Shipton to select the best albums from singer Anita O'Day's discography. On 23 October 2011, in another broadcast for Jazz Library, subsequently made available as a podcast, she joined Shipton to identify the best work of the saxophonist and singer Louis Jordan. On 22 March 2014 she picked, with Shipton, the essential recordings of Dinah Washington.

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. She was a vocalist on Dave Price's original soundtrack digital album for The Roof, which was performed by London's Fuel Theatre during 2014.

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 "You Do Something To Me". London Jazz News described the treatment of Paul Weller’s song, with Herbert accompanied only by Mason’s piano, as "a haunting and affecting performance".

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" with a "precociously powerful chemistry of taste and meticulous care for every sound – from a whisper to an exhortation" and "a voice that can effortlessly render any emotion with commanding ease". She performs solo, as a duo with her husband Ned Cartwright and with a band comprising Al Cherry (guitars), Ned Cartwright (piano, saxophone and melodica), Sam Burgess (bass) and Dave Price (percussion and fiddle).

Personal life

After several years in Hackney, London, Gwyneth Herbert now lives in St Leonards-on-Sea, Hastings, East Sussex. In 2016 she married musician Ned Cartwright, who also plays in her band.