Soul singer Mica Millar heads to the Rye International Jazz & Blues Festival

One of the brightest new stars of British Soul music, picking up Jazz FM’s Soul Act of The Year 2022 award alongside a nomination for Breakthrough Act of The Year, Mica will be in St Mary's Church on August 25 at 8pm, a date she is looking forward to: “I love playing in churches though I'm not sure that the sound engineers always like it! But really it's just the environment of a church and the aesthetic of being inside a church that I love. I'm all about the aesthetic and I think it just seems to add to the experience when you're in a church. People are not just listening. They have got the space around them and the feeling around them, and it all just adds to the experience.”

It is Mica’s first time at the festival in a summer when she isn't doing so very many festivals: “This summer the focus is much more on putting together the next album. The debut album was 2022 and it had a great response.”

And it's been a response which has given her confidence for the second: “I remember when the first album came out somebody said to me when they heard an early demo that ‘You have written this album for you.’ And I wasn't quite sure how to take that but in hindsight I did do the album for me and I think that is what has given me great confidence in my writing going forward. If you're writing for yourself, then yours is the ear that needs to assess what is going on and what it sounds like and when you've done that once, then I do think you have more confidence the second time. Writing now for the second album feels a very different experience.”

Mica doesn't know when the next album will be coming out: “People often talk about the second album as being the great challenge but I have my own label and I do feel that I've done a lot of the leg work on the album plus also writing is my happy place and it's been lovely to get back to writing for pleasure. And it is interesting how it takes shape. When you first start writing you are wondering what direction it's going to take and the first few songs are quite different in the directions they go but as you write more, you feel that there's more of an identity that comes together for the album as the whole thing starts to evolve. I do know exactly what the direction will be for the next album but I'm not going to tell you yet!

“But in terms of my writing and my writing style, what has always been fundamental to that is the songwriting and the themes, and for me the themes have to be very honest. They come from my experiences in life and from the things that I've observed in the world and in that respect that's not very different to the first album. But I do like to think that my songs are hopeful. I guess there is a hopeful quality in them.”

Since embarking on her first national UK tour in April, Mica has headlined two sold out nights at London’s Jazz Cafe and a sell-out headline show at Cheltenham Jazz Festival plus a performance with The BBC Concert Orchestra televised on BBC4. Mica also supported Lionel Richie for two nights at Blenheim Palace.