AWARD-winning vocalist, composer and multi-instrumentalist, Gwyneth Herbert has finally run away to the sea - and it's all our fault.

To be entirely exact about it - East Anglia's. Because that's where she first fell in love with the coast and where her journey from the next big jazz superstar thing to lyrical storyteller began.

Born in Wimbledon and growing up in various tiny villages in and around Surrey, Gwyneth discovered the beautiful Suffolk coast while performing at the famous Snape Maltings Proms.

She says: “After my concert the creative director, Jonathan Reekie, said he would quite like to make a home for me here.

“I’ve always liked the idea of the sea as some kind of muse and as a writer, the notion of that space in between the water and the land.”

To get inspired, Gwyneth went to live in a cottage on Aldeburgh beach, where she surrounded herself with like-minded musicians, one of which was Colchester’s Fiona Bevan.

“I met her at a gig in London,” Gwyneth adds. “I remembered the gig because I got heckled by a tramp who waved his stick at me.

“We didn’t meet up again until six months later, when she asked me to sing at her album launch. Since then we’ve become great friends.

“I actually didn’t realise she was from East Anglia until I told her about Snape and she said she knew it really well.”

The result of her stay was her celebration of the British coast, The Sea Cabinet.

Moving away from her jazz roots to develop a more whimsical folky, almost sea shanty type sound, it told the story of a woman who spends her days collecting and cataloguing items washed up on a beach, placing them in her Sea Cabinet.

Then based in London, but now having relocated to the coast full time in Hastings, her latest musical offering is also steeped in nostalgia, this time the lost art of letter writing.

Called Letters I Haven’t Written, it came about when her husband asked if she was going to write a song that only she would ever hear, what would it be about.

"It was actually quite a terrifying thought," she laughs, "but in the end it was a letter to my friend Sophie who took her own life a year and a half ago.

"That's where it all started and from that first one I began writing letters to be people I had loved and lost, and then to other people in my life like my old music teacher, and then all kinds of other people, like Michael Gove.

In a collaboration with acclaimed video artist Will Duke, who has worked with the likes of Complicite and the Royal Shakespeare Company, she'll be previewing the new project at the Colchester Arts Centre next week as part of this year's Roman River Music Festival.

“In a world of memes, status updates and limited characters," she continues, "this is a project exploring the lost art of letter correspondence. Intimate, historical, personal and political snapshots of dialogue which capture moments of time, and all the emotions that surround putting, or not putting, pen to paper.

"What I really liked about it was the personal touch. Thought and time has gone into creating it. In Colchester we are going to be working with a group of schoolchildren, to help them create their own letter song which will then be performed at the arts centre as a part of the evening."

As a recording/performing artist Gwyneth has released six critically-acclaimed albums, including the first UK Blue Note release in 30 years, and toured extensively with her band across the UK and also in Europe, Canada, the US and Kenya, sharing stages with artists such as Boy George, Amy Winehouse and Jamie Cullum.

She was first spotted just after leaving Durham University, where she studied English.

"While at university I joined a local band and we called ourselves Gwynnie and the Pacemakers," she says. "We toured old working men's clubs in the north east during term time and then in my summers I would go off to cities like Barcelona and Paris, where I hustled for gigs.

"Just after Uni I got signed by Universal as a jazz singer, which was basically the Holy Grail for artists like me, especially at that time, but it just made me unhappy. It was all about the industry, finding the next big thing, and not about the music at all. It was only when I left them that I discovered what I really wanted to do was tell stories."

Which is why a lot of her work has been in theatre.

Gwyneth featured as composer, lyricist, musical director and voice of the title role in the Bristol Old Vic’s hugely successful Christmas production of The Snow Queen. She has also co-created three musicals including 2014’s The A-Z of Mrs P at the Southwark Playhouse, conducted and performed her own film score at the British Film Institute, and has just written a song for BBC One’s EastEnders.

"I love it when music and storytelling combines," she tells me," and so I'm really looking forward to seeing where this new musical project takes me. So far there's eight and a half letters. The last one is proving a little tricky but hopefully it will be done by the time we get to Colchester.

"As well as just exploring the idea of writing an old fashioned letter, and having done quite a bit of research on the subject, it's also starting to examine how we communicate in today's society, and that is very interesting."

Gwyneth Herbert and her band

Colchester Arts Centre,

Church Street, Colchester.

Wednesday, September 27. Doors 7.30pm, show 8pm.

£15, £10 concessions, £5 under 30s. 01206 500900.

www.colchesterartscentre.com