Gabby Young was on track to become an opera singer until Jeff Buckley and the jazz greats inspired her to switch teams.

Gabby’s unique perspective of the world around her is inspired as much by imagination as real events, but when thyroid cancer threatened to take her classically trained voice at the age of 22, she got serious about recording her stories. Using her recovery time to pen her melodies, Gabby took in global influences to fuel her heartfelt emotion, which shines through her beautifully haunting songs. ‘I feel blessed rather than afflicted,’ she says simply.

Gabby then formed her existing band, normally a 5-7 piece, who complete the magical musical fairground we know today, using a wide range of instruments, most notably trumpet, trombone, piano and accordion. Young’s avant-garde fusion of globally-influenced folk combines Balkan brass, jazz and swing in an aural antiques shop from the future to produce what has been affectionately dubbed Circus Swing by those who realised there was no existing genre to encompass Young’s sound.

‘One Foot In Front of The Other’ is the follow up to the critically acclaimed 2012 album, ‘The Band Called Out For More.’ This saw Gabby featured everywhere from The Metro and The Independent, to a page interview and 4-star review in The Sun’s Something For The Weekend, with further 4-star reviews in the likes of The Guardian, FT and Mirror. The band’s first album, ‘We’re All In This Together’ was equally as lauded. On its release in 2010 it won over most of the UK’s major newspapers, including The Guardian, The Sunday Times and the Evening Standard.

Her ‘if I can balance it on my head, I’ll rock it’ approach to dressing-up inspired Stylist and Artrocker to hail her as a fashion icon. It’s all part of the same DIY, fan-engaging ethos that saw GYOA fund her releases through crowdfunding sites. Most recently she raised an amazing £9,000 in just four weeks to help record the latest album. In style and business, as in music, Young is one of life’s collectors and upcyclers.

So what is in store for 2014? At this early stage of the year, Gabby is already hitting the ground running, with short successful tours in the Middle East and France, and a show stopping headline gig at Under the Bridge, London. In March Gabby is jetting off to the USA to tour the West Coast before her showcase at SxSW in Austin on the 12th. She will barely have time to unpack before she goes to Europe for a major tour to promote her new album.