Girl with troubled past meets MOBO award winning jazz artist YolanDa Brown
4:59pm Wednesday 8th February 2012 in Where I Live By Hermione Wright
Sophie shows her project to MOBO award winning artist YolanDa Brown
A 17-year-old girl with a troubled past met a MOBO award-winning jazz musician she described as her “inspiration” this morning.
Sophie, who is studying in Southgate, and whose surname cannot be used for protection reasons, started a project about award-winning artist, YolanDa Brown, as part of black history month.
The teenager, who has been in and out of care all her life, researched the artist and made a clay model of a saxophone to show to YolanDa at the Millfield Theatre in Edmonton.
Sophie said: “YolanDa represents so much for me. She is a great musician and her life has been so interesting. She is somebody I look up to. She is my inspiration.”
YolanDa, from Wood Green, won two MOBO awards in 2008 and 2009 for the best jazz category and will be performing at the Millfield Theatre on February 24.
She said: “I received an email from one of Sophie’s teachers saying she did a project on me and was coming to my show.
“Because we don’t have much time during the show I wanted to meet her beforehand. It is always good to find out what young people are doing and to find out that Sophie considers me an inspirational figure is great.
“It was really nice to meet her and find out what she is doing. As a girl in Year 12 she is about to enter the big bad world.”
Sophie has been invited backstage to meet YolanDa and her band, as well as members of the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, during her show at the Hammersmith Apollo later this month.
