She has been described as "an exquisite wordsmith"[1] with "a voice that can effortlessly render any emotion with commanding ease" and her songs as being "impressively crafted and engrossing vignette[s] of life's more difficult moments".
[9][10] While she was studying at St Chad's College, University of Durham,[11] she met up with fellow student Will Rutter[12] and together they began to write and perform in the cafés and bars of North East England[13] as a jazz duo called Black Coffee.
[6] After leaving university, Herbert and Rutter moved to London,[12] where they soon met a former member of Boney M, who had been asked to judge a forthcoming Polish television music competition.
Herbert's version of Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", taken from this album, was featured on the soundtrack of romantic comedy Leap Year, directed by Anand Tucker and starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode.
[citation needed] John Fordham, in a four-starred review of the album for The Guardian, praised Herbert's "precociously powerful chemistry of taste and meticulous care for every sound – from a whisper to an exhortation".
[16] Herbert left Universal Classics and Jazz to pursue a less commercial and more personal musical direction[12][17] and then self-financed a project in which she collaborated with Polar Bear's Seb Rochford in a production role.
[24] In October 2009, Herbert returned to Harder Sound Studio to record the song "Perfect Fit" which she gave away as a free download, available exclusively from Naim Edge.
In a review of the album launch, The Guardian's jazz critic John Fordham said that "Herbert's imaginative narrative, and her casually commanding voice – whether softly nuanced as confiding speech or at full soaring-contralto stretch – were the central characters in an entertaining and often moving show that opens a new chapter in her creative story".
[30] In a four-starred review The Independent described it as a "cabinet of curiosities" with "a cabaret approach to storytelling, in rollicking sea shanties and waltzes", and "inventive" instrumentation "featuring wheezing accordions, warbling woodwind, tinkling music boxes and rolling bells".
[31] Alexander Varty, for Vancouver's The Georgia Straight, said that the album "blends Weimar cabaret and English music-hall stylings, with disquieting touches of avant-garde jazz".
[32] Commenting on her live performance in July 2013 at the Love Supreme Jazz Festival in Glynde Place, East Sussex, Nick Hasted of The Independent said: "Gwyneth Herbert sings the shanties on her The Sea Cabinet album with happy, cabaret sensuality, detailing a relationship’s shipwrecked, sunken past in 'I Still Hear The Bells'".
[33] In a performance described as "mesmerising"[34] and "a surreal delight",[35] with "beautiful entrancing music",[36] Theatre Elision gave the song cycle its United States premiere from 30 May to 9 June 2019 at The Southern Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
[44] In 2010, Herbert won the Stiles and Drewe Song of the Year Award with her composition "Lovely London Town",[citation needed] from a musical she wrote with playwright Diane Samuels.
[55] Reviewing the show for WhatsOnStage.com, Daisy Bowie-Sell said: "Gwyneth Herbert's music is a lovely, a-tonal mix of minor chords that are a little reminiscent of those heard in the Old Vic's recent The Grinning Man.
[62] After Lydia was given a 45-minute reading at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London on Monday 14 March 2011, starring Rebecca Caine, Andrew C. Wadsworth, Simon Green and Daniel Fraser, with Stefan Bednarczyk as musical director.
[70] In 2017, Herbert wrote the song "Boxed Up Broken Heart" for actress Jasmine Armfield to perform in the BBC television programme EastEnders, in her role as Bex Fowler.
[73] In March 2010, Herbert performed a newly commissioned score for Marion Davies’ 1928 silent comedy classic The Patsy, at BFI Southbank's Birds Eye View Film Festival.
In 2012, Herbert joined forces with members of the Buck Clayton Legacy Band to explore, in a series of concerts and talks, the jazz repertoire of Peggy Lee.
[75] In July 2012, she performed, with BBC Radio 3 DJ Max Reinhardt and Paris-based singer China Moses, in a revue by Alex Webb which told the story of Café Society, New York's first non-segregated nightclub.
[78] In 2015, as part of the London Sinfonietta’s Notes to the New Government concert, which expressed composers' hopes for the future of society following Britain's general election, she performed a new song, "Tick Tock", described by The Guardian as "gloriously done, inveigh[ing] against educational conformity".
[79] In January 2016 she and Frances Ruffelle performed a cabaret piece when Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall visited Wilton's Music Hall.
[101][102] Gwyneth Herbert has been described as a "sophisticated jazz-ballad artist"[94] with a "precociously powerful chemistry of taste and meticulous care for every sound – from a whisper to an exhortation"[43] and "a voice that can effortlessly render any emotion with commanding ease".