Imogen Jennifer Heap was born on 9 December 1977 and is a British musician, singer, songwriter and record producer.
73 Facts About Imogen Heap
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Imogen Heap's work has been considered pioneering in pop and electropop music.
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Imogen Heap began writing songs at the age of 13 and, while attending boarding school, taught herself music production.
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Imogen Heap released her debut album, an alternative rock record, I Megaphone, in 1998.
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In July 2019, Imogen Heap was awarded an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music.
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Imogen Jennifer Heap was born on 9 December 1977 in Havering, Greater London.
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Imogen Heap's name was inspired by that of British composer Imogen Holst, as her mother wanted Heap to become a cellist like Holst.
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Imogen Heap 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".
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Imogen Heap 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.
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Imogen Heap 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.
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In 1996, Imogen Heap began working with British experimental pop band Acacia, which featured her future collaborator Guy Sigsworth.
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Imogen Heap released her debut album, the alternative rock record I Megaphone, on 16 June 1998 through Almo.
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Imogen Heap was one of the artists who was dropped from the label, leaving her without a record contract.
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Imogen Heap had kept in contact with Guy Sigsworth, and this led to the pair of them establishing the collaborative project Frou Frou.
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In December 2003, Imogen Heap announced on her website that she was going to write and produce her second solo album, using her site as a blog to publicise progress.
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Imogen Heap recorded a rendition of the song "I'm a Lonely Little Petunia " for the seventh episode of the fourth season of the HBO drama series Six Feet Under, which premiered in August 2004.
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Imogen Heap set herself a deadline of one year to make the album, booking a session to master the album one year ahead in December 2004.
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Imogen Heap re-mortgaged her flat to fund production costs, including renting a studio at Atomic Studios, London, and purchasing instruments.
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In May 2005, Imogen Heap released the lead single from her forthcoming album, "Hide and Seek".
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Imogen Heap released the album on her own label, Megaphonic Records.
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In concert, Imogen Heap performed solo, controlling the sound through her laptop, as well as singing and playing the piano and array mbira.
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Also that month, Imogen Heap appeared on the soundtrack for the 2005 romantic comedy film Just Like Heaven, performing a cover of the song "Spooky" by American band Classics IV.
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In November 2005, Imogen Heap wrote and recorded the song "Can't Take It In" for the soundtrack of the fantasy film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which was released one month later.
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Imogen Heap recorded an a cappella cover of the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah" for the season three finale of The OC.
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Imogen Heap wrote and performed the song "Glittering Cloud", which was based on the plague of locusts, as part of an event called the Margate Exodus sponsored by Artangel in November 2006, where ten artists each performed one song based on one of the Plagues of Egypt in Margate.
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In December 2006, Imogen Heap was featured on the front page of The Green Room magazine.
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On 7 December 2006, Imogen Heap received two Grammy nominations for the 49th Annual Grammy Awards, one for Best New Artist and the other for Best Song Written For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media for "Can't Take It In".
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Imogen Heap used these to comment on the album as well as update on its release.
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In October 2008, Imogen Heap gave a musical performance in the anti-human trafficking documentary and rockumentary film Call + Response, directed by Justin Dillon.
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Imogen Heap was featured on two songs on Jeff Beck's live album Live at Ronnie Scott's and appeared in the accompanying DVD in April 2009.
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Imogen Heap announced on her Twitter page that Ellipses first single would be "First Train Home".
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On 17 August 2009, Imogen Heap made the entire album Ellipse available for live streaming via her webpage.
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Imogen Heap received two nominations for the 49th Annual Grammy Awards, where she won the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for her engineering work on Ellipse, making her the first female artist to win the award.
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Imogen Heap released "Xizi She Knows", the fifth single from the album, in February 2012.
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On 6 May 2011, Imogen Heap tweeted that she and deadmau5 were working on a collaboration.
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On 9 September 2012, Imogen Heap wrote and released "Someone's Calling" as a ringtone.
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In October 2015, Imogen Heap released the single "Tiny Human" using her blockchain-based platform Mycelia.
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Imogen Heap co-wrote and produced the Taylor Swift song "Clean", which appeared as the closer to Swift's fifth studio album 1989 and led to her being part of the production team that won Album of the Year at the 58th Grammy Awards.
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Imogen Heap was one of the artists featured in an episode of the 2016 PBS docuseries Soundbreaking and she narrated and composed music for the 2016 documentary Crossing Bhutan, which premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
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Imogen Heap wrote, produced and recorded the song "Magic Me" as the score for the 2017 animated short film Escape, which premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival in April of that year.
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Imogen Heap recorded "The Quiet" as the end credits song for the 2017 Square Enix video game The Quiet Man.
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Imogen Heap performed "Hide and Seek" at the benefit concert and television special One Love Manchester in Manchester in June 2017.
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Imogen Heap's performance was praised by critics as "powerful" and "melancholy".
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Imogen Heap announced in November 2017 that she would be reuniting Frou Frou with Guy Sigsworth and would be embarking on the Mycelia World Tour with him to promote the release of Mycelia's Creative Passport program.
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On 18 September 2018, Imogen Heap released The Music of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Four Contemporary Suites, a condensed soundtrack album of the play.
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Imogen Heap gave a lecture at Boston Calling Music Festival in May 2019.
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Imogen Heap performed on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts series that same month.
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Imogen Heap hosted the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony in January 2020.
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Imogen Heap gave a livestreamed closing performance for the Virtual Design Festival held by Dezeen in July 2020.
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Imogen Heap released the single "Last Night of an Empire" in December 2020.
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In late March 2022, Imogen Heap partnered with Symphonic Distribution to re-release previous material, including a handful of Frou Frou demos, which will compile into the Off Cuts release.
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Back in Essex, Imogen Heap hired Justine Pearsall to document the creation of the album.
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On 5 November 2010 at the Royal Albert Hall, Imogen Heap conducted an orchestra including her friends and family as they performed an original piece composed by Imogen Heap and orchestrated by Andrew Skeet.
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Imogen Heap worked with London Contemporary Voices at this time, a scratch choir formed for this concert, which continues as a new choir in its own right.
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Imogen Heap performed in the Film and Music Arena at Latitude Festival in 2011.
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In July 2011, Imogen Heap unveiled a pair of in-development, wired musical gloves at the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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Early versions of Imogen Heap's gloves had issues with latency and accuracy.
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Imogen Heap recorded the sixth single from Sparks, "Me the Machine", using an early version of the gloves, debuting the single during a livestream on Earth Day in 2012.
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In October 2015, Imogen Heap released the single "Tiny Human" using the blockchain-based platform Mycelia, which she created as a decentralized musical database for artists to share their music on and enforce smart contracts using Ethereum.
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Imogen Heap has written, produced and engineered most of her music on her own.
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Imogen Heap has stated that she rarely listens to music, but draws inspiration from TED conferences.
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Imogen Heap plays a number of instruments, including piano, clarinet, cello, guitar, drums and the array mbira.
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Imogen Heap extensively uses manipulated electronic sounds as an integral part of her music.
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Imogen Heap has been regarded as influential in pop music, specifically in electropop and for using technology in her music.
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Patrick Ryan of USA Today wrote that Imogen Heap "pioneered" the subgenre of folktronica, which combines elements of folk music and electronica.
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Imogen Heap has been cited as a musical inspiration by a number of artists and groups, including Ariana Grande, Bebe Rexha, Ellie Goulding, Kacey Musgraves, Pentatonix, Chloe Bailey, Empress Of, Dawn Richard, Jamila Woods, Muna, Mree, Woodes, Ben Hopkins, Matthew Parker, Red Moon, Michelle Chamuel, Chaz Cardigan, Laura Doggett, GoodLuck, Kool Kojak, and Stars and Rabbit.
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In 2008, Imogen Heap participated in an album called Songs for Tibet: The Art of Peace, which is an initiative to support Tibet, Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso and to underline the human rights situation in Tibet.
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In 2010 Imogen Heap began performing improvised pieces at shows, asking for donations for charity after the show to download the song.
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In 2011, Imogen Heap played a benefit concert in Christchurch, New Zealand, to help rebuild the Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti High School following a severe earthquake which destroyed a large portion of the city earlier in the year.
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On 4 June 2017, Imogen Heap performed at One Love Manchester, a benefit concert organised by Ariana Grande in response to the bombing after her concert at Manchester Arena two weeks earlier.
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The premise of Live 4 X thus established, Imogen Heap has since continued to refine the model, organize, host and perform a number of charitable, live-streaming concert events.
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In June 2014, Imogen Heap announced in her video blog that she was pregnant with her first child with Lebor.
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Imogen Heap gave birth to their daughter later that year.