Imogen Heap Writes Songs for Zach Braff, Charity

Posted on Nov 20th 2009 2:00PM by Robin Milling
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Actor/director Zach Braff gave Grammy-nominated English pop star Imogen Heap plenty of exposure in America when he used 'Let Go,' a former Frou Frou song, in his break-out film 'Garden State,' so she thought she might return the favor. "I wrote the song 'Wait It Out' for this Zach Braff film called 'Open Hearts,'" she tells Spinner. "I read the script on the way to Hawaii to write songs for 'Ellipse' and I loved it. I wrote this song for him helping me get the first one started in 'Garden State' but the film 'Open Hearts' fell through. He wrote me an e-mail recently asking me to write songs in another film ['Swingles'] for the character played by Cameron Diaz but I haven't read the script yet."

Heap is also very generous when it comes to lending her voice to charitable causes. She participated in the album 'Songs for Tibet: The Art of Peace,' an initiative to support the human rights effort in Tibet. Her latest pet project is a dream charity event that involves her fans and what they believe in. "I have this grand plan for the next tour I do in April, which is to go to each city and create some kind of platform for people to enter information on this computer screen at the venue on how they want me to improvise a song," she says. "I have to improvise a song on the theme of what they want." Once the song is written, she'll record it and put it on iTunes. "When people buy it the proceeds go to the charity that is particular to that city," she says.

"There are various different charities that I think are worthy," she continues. "In that way, I give them something musically, which is what I do rather than waving the flag for one charity out of so many, raising the awareness of lots of them rather than just one. How do you choose? There are so many charities to get involved in if you could. It's also a way of avoiding that 'pop star charity thing,' which just doesn't look right sometimes. This way it works for me."