travel talk
LAURA MVULA ON PLACES THAT INSPIRE HER
SINGER-SONGWRITER Laura Mvula isn’t one for staying in one place too long. The 33-year-old Birmingham native says travelling helps with her songwriting.
Here are some of the places that have helped her creativity...
■ LOS ANGELES: Laura recently spent a month and a half in LA working on her third album.
“I’d visited LA when touring, but it’s very different,” she says. “Before having this opportunity I had very closed, stereotypical ideas about LA not having the grit of New York or London – just having people who only enjoy yoga and smoothies.
“LA is a place where you can pretty much have access to everything. The landscape is beautiful because it’s so flat – you can see everything, you can see so much sky. You can hike if you want, you can go to the beach a few miles away, you can go to the Hollywood Hills – where I was staying, so I had this beautiful view of the city to wake up to every morning.”
NEW YORK: Where Laura made her album The Dreaming Room.
“That was an amazing experience because I was in the heart of the East Village, where Jimi Hendrix built his Electric Lady Studio,” she says. “So I was working in an iconic New York space for three weeks, which was special, and they’ve kept so many of the features of the studio since the late Seventies.”
■ STRATFORD-UPON-AVON: This is where she composed the music for Antony & Cleopatra for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
“Environment is so important while I’m making music – not just my immediate space, but what’s happening when I open the front door, what my eyes see, the vibe of the people of the town, what’s the history, what’s the story like?
“I enjoyed the cobbled streets, waking up every morning and going for a run alongside the lake.
“There were so many swans in the lake, and that took me back to childhood, because park life was so regular for me growing up.”
■ Laura Mvula is working with Hotel Indigo on Clues to the Neighbourhood, a collection of artefacts which lets guests discover off-the-beaten path experiences.