Crawley mezzo-soprano Emily Gray’s new album of English Song

It was the moment Dorothy Webster Thomas entered her life.

Now, along with pianist Nicole Johnson, Emily is releasing the album The Silver Swan exploring the music of Michael Head and Eric Thiman (available through www.emilyjanegray.com or https://conviviumrecords.co.uk/product/the-silver-swan/).

“In January 2017 Nicole and I entered an English Song competition whilst we were both students at Trinity Laban. I was not feeling remotely good about singing and cried a lot that day. We could only win as a duo – there wasn't a separate prize for the pianist – and accordingly, we did not win. I did not, in my mind, put on a good show.”

But in the audience was a lady called Dorothy Webster Thomas: “And a week later, Dorothy sent Nicole and me a letter via the conservatoire (Trinity). She said that she thought we should have won, and she gave us a £25 cheque.

“I wrote back to Dorothy and explained that I had been a weepy weirdo in recent weeks. She had cheered me up immensely. We went for lunch, and Dorothy started to come to everything I did. She described herself as my army. She is in her 80s and about 5ft tall, but she is a real trooper.

“In the early 1950s when Dorothy was a teenager, she entered a singing festival without parental approval. She won first place. The judges were two composers called Michael Head and Eric Thiman. They convinced her to audition at the Royal Academy of Music, the conservatoire they both worked at. She did audition and she did get in. Head and Thiman knew she came from a poor background and that she did not have familial support. They kept an eye on her well-being, both financially and musically.”

All these years later, Dorothy was wanting to promote the lesser-known works of Eric Thiman: “She had decided to set aside a significant sum for Nicole and me to record an album of both Eric Thiman and Michael Head. Dorothy is not a wealthy woman. The Thiman was, prior to this album, entirely unrecorded.”

And that is the album that has now landed – the result of Dorothy arriving at exactly the right moment in Emily’s life.

“It's a tough profession and I had an early career as a kid. I released an album all about Jesus dying when I was 14 and it's one of the most requested things at funerals around the UK. I went to music school off the back of that and I won BBC Radio 2 Choir Girl of the Year 2000. But I had terrible stage fright and gave up for ten years, working as a legal PA. But I started a choir to keep my hand in and when one of the soloists couldn't come for some reason, I ended up singing the part.”

Emily’s performance was noticed in the right places and she was offered a scholarship to Trinity Laban: “I was 28 and really I should have been a lot younger. I was ten years older than everybody but I did it and that went really well but then when I was 30 or 31 years old and I wasn't getting anywhere I felt like my life had taken all the wrong turns and that was the point when we did this competition and that's when I was just thinking what the hell have I done.”

Which is when Dorothy intervened…