Candlelit concert celebrates new album at Festival of Chichester

Emily be performing in the Novium for this year’s Festival of Chichester (tickets through the Festival of Chichester box office) on June 26 and June 27 at 19:30, all on the back of her Vapour Trails album which came out late last year.

“The candle lighting will create some interesting shadows, and I think it will be a great backdrop,” Emily says. “It's wonderful to be performing there as part of the Festival. I always love music in spaces where music is not normally heard. And I always think it's nice to put songs where stories are. My songs are narrative songs. They tell stories, and the Novium is just full of stories.

“Wherever you play does have an influence on the way the sound is carried and the music is received, and I love the idea of playing somewhere that is built on top of ancient Chichester! As I said, the shadows from the candlelight will be fantastic. I think we will feel a little bit like we are separate from the rest of the world. I love playing in interesting and unusual and slightly quirky spaces. The Novium can hold only 60 people per evening so it will also feel very intimate in there.

“I will be doing mostly songs from Vapour Trails, the album that came out in October. It's a story album. It's about travel and about loss and about love and about adventure. It is about the little things that probably have a global resonance at times in the way that we humans feel them. Quite often it's the little moments that we remember, and also stories about growing up and losing stuff and losing someone.

“I also think that I'm quite visual in my songs. When I write, I try to create lyrics which create moments in people's minds, and often I'm thinking of pictures in my mind too, and that's the whole thing with the album. With the title Vapour Trails it's about planes leaving those lines in the sky but then slowly they disperse and then there’s nothing there at all and it is like the trails have never been there.

“I have always loved looking at the sky. I spend a lot of time looking at the sky. I love feeling tiny. The sky makes you feel tiny just because it is so completely massive, and it is the ultimate reality check. If you're consumed with your own nonsense, then just look up at the sky and you feel so unimportant but it's actually really strangely grounding at the same time. I love the sky, and I love clouds.”

Emily is really pleased with the response to the album so far: “I think people have been moved by it. You want something that you've created to reach out and to resonate with other people. People ask you how the album is going, and that's a difficult one to answer because it gives an impression that an album needs to go somewhere. For me, the thing is all about creating it, and then for me it is all about sharing it and hoping that it will resonate with someone else and that they might perhaps be changed by it. That's what I love about making an album. It feels like a whole bit of honesty that you are putting out there and maybe it will reach someone and make a difference to them.”

The concerts are a late addition to this year’s Festival Chichester and do not feature in the brochure.

The 2025 Festival of Chichester is delighted to welcome Edward Cooke Family Law as its principal sponsor. The Festival is generously supported by Chichester City Council, firm friends to the Festival since its inception.