Fiona Mactaggart in conversation with Sophie Bancroft

In May 2022 to coincide with the Mental Health Foundation’s ‘Mental Health Awareness Week’, Women in Jazz Media published an article written by our Mental Health and Wellbeing group members Diana Torti and Fiona Mactaggart, discussing WiJM’s aim to support mental health and wellbeing amongst the Jazz community and also to support a wide-ranging discourse about the particular challenges of working in a creative industry such as Jazz. Often this can include an experience of feeling isolated and “the only one” with our own particular mental health issues. As part of our next steps we would like to share a podcast interview by WiJM’s Fiona Mactaggart. Fiona, a Jazz journalist and retired psychiatrist speaks with Jazz singer and songwriter Sophie Bancroft, who shares some of the challenges she has faced as a busy, gigging, peri-menopausal Jazz musician. Heralding from one of Britain’s top jazz families, with brothers Tom and Phil Bancroft, Sophie’s early part of her career saw her performing jazz vocals around Britain and Europe at major jazz festivals and clubs, and on regular broadcasts for the BBC.  She has gone on to have a highly successful career as a singer-songwriter with a unique blend of jazz and folk influences. https://www.sophiebancroft.co.uk/