Winchester singer songwriter Ella Janes will be supporting Jools Holland on his Spring and Autumn tours which visit Southampton's Mayflower Theatre on November 4.

Ella went to St Swithun's School where she started her first band which entered Winchester’s Battle of the Bands at the Guildhall in 2006 before immersing themselves in the Winchester music scene which led to innumerable gigs at The Railway Inn.

Ella then went onto study at Peter Symonds College and pursued music as a solo artist alongside her studies, later undertaking a BA French degree at University of Exeter, living abroad in Nantes (France), before moving to London and joining the London music scene as a resident of Ronnie Scott’s in Soho.

Ella returns to The Railway every year at the end of December with friends Flyte and Ryan O’Reilly for an annual Christmas show as an ode to home and their time growing up and playing music in Winchester together.

of playing the Mayflower theatre Ella said: "It's especially poignant to be opening for Jools at The Mayflower - I performed there once before as a child as part of a summertime musical and never imagined I’d be returning to perform my own material there with Jools."

She has been a resident of Ronnie Scott’s in Soho, performed at the Isle of Wight festival in 2015. and was invited to perform a series of commissioned tracks at the TEDx event event ‘2037: The Future is Our Present’ in Rome last April.

However, it was after a opening for Simple Minds and Toploader at Alnwick Castle in 2014, that sound engineer Andy Salmon recommended her for Jools’ tours, which, several years later, has led to her receiving an invitation to support him on his 2018 UK tour.

The support tour kicks off in Tunbridge Wells next month, and concludes with dates at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Ella's sound sound draws faithfully from the folk tradition with an occasional infusion of electronica, making her performances always varied, always fresh.

Her major single of 2017, Burned Out, received early support from Frontier Music, who featured a raw acoustic performance across their platforms. The track beautifully manifests Ella’s latest preoccupations with time and space,

combining her strong folk foundation with celestial pop mutations.

She opens 2018 with the release of a new solo EP recorded in West London, featuring five live stripped-back tracks.

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