Performer, composer / lyricist and musical activist Gwyneth Herbert has been hailed as one the most imaginative and idiosyncratic artists of her generation.
She has collaborated with artists, academics, communities, companies, orchestras, pole dancers and puppets to produce a huge canon of interdisciplinary work that, whilst challenging expectations, seeks to find dialogue with the world.
With connection and community at the heart of her practice, her work is rooted in a desire to question the binary, to reach across the divide… to hold both the shadows and the light and find the hope within.
The release of her seventh solo album, Letters I Haven’t Written, was accompanied by an ambitious live tour exploring the struggle for connection through film, narrative, soundscape and song. As well as inviting audience members to offer a line from a letter they wished they had sent, she met the untold stories of unheard voices in creative workshops around the country. These participants then joined her onstage as encore choirs, to sing their musical “Letters” out into the world – listening, making, sharing together.
Gwyneth is also the co-creator of seven musicals, including the record-breaking productions of “A Christmas Carol” and “The Nutcracker” at Bristol Old Vic, with writer Tom Morris and director Lee Lyford.
Her arrangement of Swahili folk song Baiskeli – taught to her by young people in workshops on the outskirts of Mombasa – was commissioned for Benjamin Britten’s centenary and simultaneously performed by 100,000 children worldwide.
Other composition work has involved major commissions from the London Sinfonietta, Mahogany Opera Group, Roman River Festival, Snape Maltings; transforming Stratford Station into a Fun Palace and recruiting a choir on wheels in Sheffield with artist Mel Brimfield, and conducting her own film score at the BFI.
Contact
For bookings and enquiries, please contact Helen Mumby at The Soho Agency