Chester

Coordinates: 53°11′25″N 2°53′30″W / 53.1903°N 2.8916°W / 53.1903; -2.8916

Chester (/ˈtʃɛstər/ CHESS-tər) is a walled city in Cheshire, England. Lying on the River Dee, close to the border with Wales, it is the largest and most populous settlement of the unitary authority area of Cheshire West and Chester, which had a combined population of 328,100 according to the 2001 Census, increasing to 329,608 at the 2011 Census. Chester was granted city status in 1541.

Chester was founded as a "castrum" or Roman fort with the name Deva Victrix, during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian in AD79. One of the three main army camps in the Roman province of Britannia, Deva later became a major civilian settlement. In 689, King Æthelred of Mercia founded the Minster Church of West Mercia, which later became Chester's first cathedral, and the Saxons extended and strengthened the walls, much of which remain, to protect the city against the Danes. Chester was one of the last cities in England to fall to the Normans. William the Conqueror ordered the construction of a castle, to dominate the town and the nearby Welsh border.

Ed Sheeran

Edward Christopher "Ed" Sheeran (born 17 February 1991) is an English singer-songwriter and musician. He was born in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire and raised in Framlingham, Suffolk. After dropping out of school at 16, he moved to London the following year, in 2008, to pursue a career in music. In early 2011, Sheeran independently released the extended play, No. 5 Collaborations Project, which caught the attention of Elton John and Jamie Foxx. After signing with Asylum Records, his debut album, + (read as "plus"), was released on 9 September 2011 and has since been certified six-times platinum in the UK. The album contains the single "The A Team", which earned him the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. In 2012, Sheeran won the Brit Awards for Best British Male Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act.

Sheeran's popularity abroad began in 2012. In the US, he made a guest appearance on Taylor Swift's fourth studio album, Red. "The A Team" was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2013 Grammy Awards, where he performed the song with Elton John. He spent much of 2013 opening for Swift's The Red Tour in North America dates. In late 2013, he performed three sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden as a headline act. He was nominated for Best New Artist at the 2014 Grammy Awards.

Tom Odell

Thomas Peter Odell (born 24 November 1990) is an English singer-songwriter. He released his debut extended play, Songs from Another Love, in 2012 and won the BRITs Critics' Choice Award in early 2013. His debut studio album, Long Way Down, was issued on 24 June 2013.

Early life

Odell was born in Chichester, West Sussex, to an airline pilot father and a primary school teacher mother. He has an older sister He spent part of his childhood in New Zealand because of his father's job. He was educated at Seaford College He studied piano classically to Grade 7. He began writing his own songs at the age of thirteen but told no one, because he felt it was "uncool".

At the age of eighteen, Odell abandoned plans to attend the University of York and attempted to gain a place at a music college in Liverpool. He appeared at open-mic events nightly: "It was full of humiliation: dragging a keyboard round, turning up to find out I’d been taken off the bill, gangs of lads grabbing the mic off me and laughing... I learnt to perform and learnt what songs work." After a year, he moved back to Chichester after being made redundant from his job as a barman. Using his grandmother's car, he travelled regularly to London to play shows and to put advertisements in music schools. He studied at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music playing as part of the band Tom and the Tides before moving to London in 2010. Tom and The Tides recorded the song "Spider" for the Brighton Institute of Modern Music student album "What's Inside Your Head Vol.3". However, he later decided to become a solo artist because he "didn't want to have to rely on people".