Rosemary hopes her career will hit the right notes

An NHS project manager who swaps spreadsheets for song sheets is hoping to develop her musical career this year.

Rosemary Nwodoh works for East Kent Hospitals by day, but can be found gigging solo or with her band by night.

Although she has sung with choirs since childhood, it was the Covid lockdown period that inspired her to explore the possibility of recording and performing her own songs. She also decided to change career plans, in the final year of a law degree, which led to her working for the NHS, initially for the Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board.

Rosemary, who lives in Chatham, said: “I fell out of love with law and start exploring more creative opportunities, including music.

“I had a lot of time on my hands, as many people did, and started to think more seriously about music as a career.

“I knew I definitely didn’t want to be a lawyer, so I also looked at different jobs where I could make use of my degree, and project management was one.

“Although it’s very different to music, the skills are useful for the business side when it comes to booking gigs or studios and planning recording sessions.”

Rosemary, 26, regularly performs in London venues, and has also released an EP, Love, Chidimma, and a single, Mystery. She released a remix of the single last year.

She describes her style as R&B and neo soul, with influences including Solange, and Summer Walker.

She writes her own music, or works with producers to write lyrics for their tracks.

Rosemary said: “Writing and performing are my favourite things to do, and I would love to be able to do music full-time.

“For now, I’m happy to do it whenever I can and see what happens.

“I never thought I would have an EP out so who knows what this next year will bring?”

Rosemary also works as a voiceover artist, and narrated an audio documentary for BBC4.

She said: “That happened a bit by chance, after I put an Instagram story up asking for suggestions of jobs I could do using my voice.

“Someone suggested voiceover work and sent over an opportunity, so I applied and sent in a snippet of me reading from a script.

“They really liked it so I recorded the whole thing remotely – luckily my brother also makes music so had a studio set-up I could use.”

You can find Rosemary on X, Tiktok and Instagram as @chidimmaldn and listen to her music on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.