Imogen Heap

Imogen Jennifer Jane Heap (born 9 December 1977) is a British musician, singer, songwriter and record producer.

Her work has been considered pioneering in pop and electropop music.

Heap classically trained in piano, cello, and clarinet starting at a young age.

She began writing songs at the age of 13 and, while attending boarding school, taught herself music production.

After being discovered by manager Mickey Modern while attending the BRIT School, Heap signed to independent record label Almo Sounds at the age of 18 and later began working with experimental pop band Acacia.

Imogen Jennifer Jane Heap was born on 9 December 1977 in Havering, Greater London.

Her name was inspired by that of British composer Imogen Holst, as her mother wanted Heap to become a cellist like Holst.

She played music from an early age, first learning the piano due to "wanting attention" as a middle child and realizing, according to her, that "it was something [she] could make a lot of noise with".

She did not enjoy playing the music of classical composers such as Bach and Beethoven, and would instead attempt to play in their style to convince her parents she was practicing their music.

As a child, she began recording music by recording herself playing piano on cassette, then recording herself again singing over it.

She soon began taking lessons and became classically trained in several instruments including piano, cello and clarinet while attending Friends School, a private, Quaker-run boarding school in Saffron Walden.

At around age 10, she began composing Christmas carols for her school's choir.

Due to being placed a year above children her age, Heap claims she did not get along with many people from the school and spent most of her time in the music room practising piano.

She stated, "In boarding school...I was mocked about the clothes I wore, the way I looked, whatever. People there really did regard me as some kind of freak from the middle of nowhere. And these things do matter a lot when you are sixteen, seventeen."

Heap's mother, an art therapist, and father, a construction rock retailer, separated when she was twelve years old.

Also at age twelve, she taught herself how to use Cubase on an Atari computer at Friends School.

By the age of thirteen, she had begun writing songs.

At age fifteen, she began using reel-to-reel recording to record her music, using a home computer to program the music.

After boarding school, she went on to study at the BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology in Croydon, South London, where she first began regularly singing and writing songs due to loneliness.

It was there that she recorded her first song to feature her vocals, "Missing You", which was released on the BRIT School's Class of 1994 album and earned her attention from manager Mickey Modern after he saw her performance at a talent showcase.

After being introduced to Nik Kershaw by Modern, Heap recorded demos which were taken to Rondor Music.

A few months later, Heap signed her first record contract, aged 18, with independent record label Almo Sounds.

In 1996, Heap began working with British experimental pop band Acacia, which featured her future collaborator Guy Sigsworth.

While never a full member of the band, Heap was a guest vocalist and contributed to various Acacia singles and album tracks.

Heap's first major live solo performance was as part of the line-up for the 1996 Prince's Trust Concert in Hyde Park.

Heap's debut commercial single, "Getting Scared", was released in 1997 and included on the soundtrack for the 1998 horror film I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.

She released her debut album, an alternative rock record, I Megaphone, in 1998.

She released her debut album, the alternative rock record I Megaphone, on 16 June 1998 through Almo, with "Getting Scared" as its lead single.

The record was made with several producers, including English musician Dave Stewart and Sigsworth, and received some critical praise but was a commercial failure, as Almo did little to promote the album.

Soon after Heap released the record, Almo Sounds was acquired by Universal, forcing its artists to either move to other labels or be released.

In early 2002, Heap and English record producer Guy Sigsworth formed the electronic duo Frou Frou and released their only album to date, Details (2002).

Her second studio album, Speak for Yourself, was released in 2005 on her own label, Megaphonic Records, and was certified gold in the United States and Canada.

The album spawned three singles: "Headlock", "Goodnight and Go", which became her highest-charting single as a lead artist on the UK Singles Chart, and "Hide and Seek", which was certified gold in the United States and gained popularity after being used in the Fox teen drama television series The O.C..

Heap's third studio album, Ellipse (2009), peaked in the top five of the Billboard 200 chart and received mostly positive reviews.

This was followed by her fourth studio album, Sparks (2014).

In 2017, she reunited with Sigsworth as part of Frou Frou.

Heap developed the Mi.Mu Gloves, a line of musical gloves, as well as a blockchain-based music-sharing program, Mycelia.

She also composed the music for the West End/Broadway play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Over the course of her career, she has received two Grammy Awards, one Ivor Novello Award, and one Drama Desk Award.

In July 2019, Heap was awarded an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music.