Melody Gardot, whose restrained voice grew out of a serious accident, sings with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall for the EFG London Jazz Festival.
Melody Gardot, who began writing songs after a road accident, sings with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington on Monday 16 November 2026. The trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf joins her.
Gardot was nineteen and cycling in Philadelphia in November 2003 when a car hit her. She spent a year in a hospital bed with head, spinal and pelvic injuries, left oversensitive to light and sound and with a damaged short-term memory.
A doctor suggested music as therapy. She learned the guitar lying down and wrote songs to hold the memory in place, and the recordings she made in that state became her first record.
Her contralto is smoky and deliberately underpowered, and her songwriting moves through jazz, blues and bossa nova. She performs seated and in dark glasses, records as often in French as in English, and has built her working life in Europe.
The concert is a single night inside the EFG London Jazz Festival, setting that voice against a full orchestra and choir.
The South African Thanda Choir sings with her. Lubiana, the Belgian singer and kora player, opens.