“This, I realised, was the best thing I’d seen in three days of Glastonbury. Her name, I discovered later, was Jessica Goyder.â€
Johnny Black, Mojo, Blender
Jessica grew up in India, Ethiopia and Oxford in the UK. A classically trained pianist and self-taught guitarist, it’s her voice that continues to silence the room.
She cut her teeth in a local band and played her way solo around London and Sydney. Then little short of a musical explosion followed her first landing in Barcelona in 2001. She fell in with a crowd of Brazilian musicians, discovered Bossa Nova and lived for more than a year as a singing angel street statue. Later periods in the city were spent wrestling music theory in Catalan and taking local cabarets by storm in an eight-girl country band. Her songwriting is often inspired by her travels, from a tour of Central America and Cuba, where she performed regularly at Havana’s 'Casa de la Troba' to a more recent series of concerts in Brazil and Argentina.
Jessica has performed on stages of all shapes and sizes, including 4 Glastonburys, Brighton and Edinburgh Festivals, City Showcase, a residency at Henley Festival and after Jools Holland at the first ever Cornbury. Collaborations include work with The Soundbringer and the electronica album Cosmos with the producer Mr. Smith, released in Canada.
She teamed up with a drummer, bassist and cellist in 2007 and hasn’t looked back. With a recent return to her first love, the piano, she performs regularly in the UK and Spain and is now recording a debut album.
