Naomi Sutherland

Which school?

Parents often ask my opinion when it comes to choosing schools for their children. They feel torn between wanting to do the best thing for their child, while being uncertain of how to judge a school before their…

I've never been so grateful for anything as much as the times I've fallen flat on my face.   

- My A-levels were one long string of poor grades until my final exams.   

- I have never had…

Career Tips No.1

If you can't answer the question “What do you want to do?” 

Don't try until you can!

So much about careers advice is rooted in a question that begins each conversation and so…

What if you take a classical trio and put it with John Lennon? The last Eclectica was a sublime mix of the mainstream and the mysterious. I did a few songs ranging from Kate Bush to originals, including a poem…

Does a night of witchery sound like January to you? I didn't mean to be so witchy. It came to me through the songs that forever I leaned to for a sense of sisterhood. The list is growing and moving…

It's Black History Month!

Celebrating the rights, history and legacy of that so poignant a phrase - "black" people. I love how the word references so much and so nothing. Human progress has got us so far as…

The way things are going in the music industry, originals artists have all the best and all the worst options ahead of them. Record labels expect bands and artists to have sold out shows and touring / recording before they…

How does one describe innate fear? 

I wrote the song Murky Waters as a co-write, lyrics only, and left the rest to my songwriter partner on the track Will Fergusson. He and I have shared a conflictual relationship. We…

A friend recently told me that she'd gone to see a vocal therapist because she was unhappy that her voice lacked stature. In certain social contexts, it would rise and turn to a squeak. She was nervous - and her…

The most disturbing experience of love I ever had was opening a book of Disney's Beauty and the Beast when I was at the dentists about to get my teeth cleaned, and feeling like I had returned to source: love…

It's a complex beast, finding the different vocal technique that suits you as a singer. The difficulty is that singing coaches will observe popular singers and work out mechanically the techniques they use to achieve certain effects, maybe belting for…

Wittgenstein.

Not a word you hear very often in a song, not a love song. But his words rule my mind more than mine, and more than love.

If you think on a word long enough, you'll find…

As we fast approach the Soup Kitchen Boogie on May 13th, the theme on everyone's mind seems to be "home". 

In fact, I went to a fabulous contemporary dance show at the Norwich Arts Centre last week called…

What an absolute blast. To be back in Moscow after five years? A blast yes, but in the sense that I really felt like my memories blasted me back from the dead. 

Moscow was the city from which I…

Spent the day in a pub.

I ate a Ploughman's lunch and had a cup of tea. I didn't know about this pub when I set off, I just wanted somewhere to write and couldn't trust what I read…