Laura Mvula

Britain's Laura Mvula possesses a soulful voice that fuses R&B, jazz, classical, and pop into inventive, atmospheric soundscapes. She first gained widespread notice in 2013 when her debut album Sing to the Moon arrived to strong critical praise and earned a Mercury Prize nomination. Her second studio album, The Dreaming Room, arrived in 2016 and connected even more deeply with listeners and reviewers, prompting her to explore theater scores and film soundtracks. A busy stretch in 2021 that opened with an EP of reinterpretations and continued through a run of vivid, artful pop singles ultimately produced her third album, Pink Noise.

Mvula entered the world in 1986 and spent her childhood in the suburbs of Birmingham, raised by a mother from Saint Kitts and a father from Jamaica. Her father introduced her to jazz, and she started piano lessons near the age of eight before adding violin studies at ten. During those years she also performed with local youth orchestras while nurturing an ambition, sparked by her affection for Disney films, to become a film composer.

As a teenager Mvula turned toward R&B and gospel, eventually becoming a member of her aunt’s a cappella group Black Voices. After secondary school she attended the Birmingham Conservatoire at Birmingham City University and earned a composition degree. She later took positions as a supply teacher in the Birmingham school system and as a receptionist, periods during which she also began composing songs on her laptop. Her demo recordings eventually reached manager Kwame Kwaten, who secured her a recording contract with RCA.

Her debut EP, She, appeared in September 2012. The release quickly drew public interest, and by October Mvula had been long-listed for the BBC’s Sound of 2013 poll, ultimately placing fourth. In 2013 she issued her first full-length album, Sing to the Moon. The record earned acclaim, reached number nine on the U.K. chart, and yielded singles such as “Green Garden,” which peaked at number 31. Sing to the Moon also brought Mvula a Mercury Prize nomination along with MOBO Awards for Best Female Act and Best R&B or Soul Artist.

In 2014 she collaborated with Metropole Orkest on Laura Mvula with Metropole Orkest, an orchestral reinterpretation of Sing to the Moon captured at Abbey Road Studios. Two years afterward she released her second studio album, The Dreaming Room, which included appearances by rapper Wretch 32 and legendary R&B guitarist Nile Rodgers. The album received strong reviews, earned a Mercury Prize shortlist placement, and won the Ivor Novello Award. A 2018 undertaking found Mvula writing music for a London staging of Antony and Cleopatra, and in 2020 she supplied the song “Brighter Dawn” to the film Clemency. A sequence of releases followed in 2021, beginning with the EP 1/f that reworked songs from her earlier albums. The EP’s ’80s art-pop leanings foreshadowed the direction of several subsequent original singles that led to Pink Noise, Mvula’s third proper album, issued that July following her new arrangement with Atlantic Records.