Donna Thompson

Friday 7.45pm

Brunel Goods Shed
Station Approach, Stroud GL5 3AP

Music has never left DONNA THOMPSON but, for a while, she left it. There was no loss of love for the craft itself; instead it was the collision of trying to find space and time to create running up against the realities of having to pay rent and make a living. And, as anyone who gives up something they love can attest, once you’re out it’s hard to get yourself back in. 

Donna, however, is back IN. Skip forward a few years and she’s now a key figure and collaborator in the increasingly legendary Total Refreshment Centre, back in her groove as a musician and fighting hard for that creative headspace she once thought she’d lost.

On Something True (2022, PRAH Recordings), across four tracks of swirling, cinematic jazz and meditative R&B, Donna grappled with the importance of self-love, of community and the strength found within oneself and others. It isn’t an EP that simply waves the flag of victory at a journey completed – life isn’t like that after all. Instead, there’s a realisation that the battle never really ends but that the wins should be celebrated when they can, that past traumas stay with you and it’s worth fighting through them to find love both inwardly and from outside.