IMOGEN HEAP “Xizi She Knows” Continuing her innovative journey on the creation of her work in progress 4th solo album, Imogen Heap has travelled to monumental new heights producing the new album track “Xizi She Knows”. ‘Xizi She Knows’ continues Imogen’s innovative approach to music and songwriting as she embarked on her most ambitious project to date. Spending six weeks in Hangzhou, East China, Imogen took part in the Musician in Residence - China project, organised and funded by the British Council and PRS for Music Foundation, designed to enable innovative British musicians (other artists chosen for the project include Jamie Woon, Gareth Bonello and Matthew Bourne) to explore new musical territory, reach new audiences and write new material in the context of a changing international market. Her residency was hosted by the local newspaper Dushi Kuaibao (City Express). Imogen immersed herself in getting to know the beautiful city of Hangzhou; using its culture, history and people to fuel the creative output. What materialised involved almost 300 local people volunteering for her project and stringing together a 24 hour extravaganza of curated hourly moments at various locations across the city which began at midnight on her 34th birthday, 9th December 2011. Additional local people were involved along the way as they followed the events using a map printed in the local paper. Filmed footage and all the sounds recorded on that day became the fabric of the song and the video. The idea of Hangzhou communicating what it has to offer visually and verbally was explored and Imogen created a musical response to this idea. The tempo of the song came from a young schoolgirl who counted in the daily eye exercises at her class. A wonderful surprise on the day included a woman screaming on top of a hill drawing in the sunrise which features unexpectedly in the middle section of the song. Both Imogen and her crew connected these everyday moments with an accompaniment. For instance, a choir on a commuter bus, a dancer flowing around the machines of the daily print run for the paper, people gathering over the huge river to throw thousands of autumn leaves in celebration to the daily tide as well as a man on his 60th birthday waving a huge 8-foot yellow silk flag to a backdrop of grid-locked rush hour traffic. Imogen directed the film throughout the day and was accompanied by 4 film crews and 4 news teams, both local and national. Imogen commented “The song reflects a life changing period in my life and I’m hugely grateful to all involved for giving me the opportunity to let my creativity run wild about a whole city! I couldn’t even have imagined it before I left. I’m excited to now go back next week to play everyone what came of it all and to see the lantern festival for Chinese New year and catch up with some great friends I made out there”. The film will be out in the next few months but for now we have a taster of the day’s events in the “Xizi She Knows” official music video.

Chinese new year is on 23rd January this year and in celebration of this, ‘Xizi She Knows’ will be released and go live on imogenheap.com for the occasion and available to download on iTunes now.

Heap is working on a Mandarin version of “Xizi She Knows” with poet Pang Wei on her next visit which will be released within the month. For all information please go to imogenheap.com For further information please contact Carl, Emma and Anna at Purple PR on 020 7434 7090 /[email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]. Notes to editors For more information on PRS for Music Foundation, please contact Sarah Thirtle on 020 7306 4741, [email protected]. For more information on the British Council, please contact Alex Bratt on 0207 389 4872 [email protected]. The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We create international opportunities for the people of the UK and other countries and build trust between them worldwide. We work in over 100 countries in the arts, education and English and in 2010/11 we engaged face to face with 30 million people and reached 578 million. We have 6,800 staff worldwide. Our total turnover in 2010/11 was £693 million, of which our grant-inaid from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was £190 million. The remainder was generated through trading activities such as English language teaching. For every £1 of taxpayer money invested we earn £2.65 in additional income. www.britishcouncil.org PRS for Music Foundation is the UK's leading funder of new music across all genres. Since 2000 the Foundation has awarded over £14 million to more than 4,000 new music projects. Widely respected as an adventurous and proactive funding body, PRS for Music Foundation supports an exceptional range of new music activity by awarding grants and leading partnership programmes that support the development of new music in the UK. www.prsformusicfoundation.com