KATIE Melua will play York Barbican on November 7 next year on her
45-date winter tour.
Tickets for the Georgian-born singer-songwriter go on sale on Friday, November 22 at 10am on 0203 356 5441, at yorkbarbican.co.uk or in person from the Barbican box office.
Katie last performed at the Barbican last December, where she was joined
by the Gori Women’s Choir.
The tour announcement coincides with news of a Live In Concert double
album, featuring the Gori Women’s Choir, recorded at the Central Hall,
Westminster, London, last December.
This limited-edition collection is presented as an 84-page hardback book,
containing never-before-seen photographs of moments on stage and
behind-the-scenes, captured by photographer Karni Arieli.
The book also contains illustrations created by the show’s creative directors,
Karni & Saul, and opens with a foreword by Melua.
Born in the Georgian city of Kutaisi, Katie and her family moved to Belfast when she was nine years old. Now 35, she has released seven studio albums, the most recent being In Winter, the 2016 silver-certified set recorded with the Gori Women’s Choir in Georgia.
The new Live In Concert double album opens at Katie’s birthplace in Georgia
with her solo rendition of the folk song Tu Asa Turpa Ikavi. Plane
Song, performed with her brother Zurab Melua, speaks of their childhood in the
city of Kutaisi, and is followed by Belfast, tracing the
family’s emigration to the United Kingdom. Here, Katie’s journey towards
becoming a professional recording artist began, leading to her debut album,
Call Off The Search, released in 2003 at the age of 19.
The show recording continues with songs from all Katie’s albums, works
by writers that have inspired her, crowd favourites and tales from her past.
Through the blustery autumn, the still English winter, and eventually to
the spring with the world in full bloom, the artists on stage finally bring the
show to a hopeful, joyous and optimistic close with a rendition of Louis
Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World.
“I still remain cautiously optimistic about being at the edge of light,” says Steve Hackett
FOR the
first time, former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett is on the road performing
his old band’s 1973 album, Selling England By The Pound, in its entirety.
Now 69, Hackett will be performing the venerated likes of Dancing With The Moonlit Knight, Firth Of Fifth, Cinema Show and I Know What I Like (In My Wardrobe) at a sold-out York Barbican on Tuesday (November 19).
This will
be complemented by further Genesis numbers, selections from Hackett’s Spectral
Mornings album to mark its 40th anniversary and highlights from this
year’s At The Edge Of Light release.
“The idea
to do the whole of Selling England By The Pound came from recalling that, at
the time, John Lennon said it was one of the albums he was listening to that
year,” says Steve.
“By the
time Sgt. Pepper came along, there were surprises around every corner in The
Beatles’ music, so the challenge for me was always there, and I was rather
hoping that Genesis would expand to an orchestra, but in fact they did the
opposite and got smaller and smaller!”
He looks back
fondly on Selling England By The Pound. “It was my favourite Genesis album that
gave us our first hit,” he says.
“Then
something special happened with Spectral Mornings, with my first touring band,
and now I feel this year’s album, At The Edge Of Light, is special too, doing
something political that I knew would be uncommercial, doing something that I
wanted to do at a certain point, like when Queen and Led Zeppelin did creative
things in an earlier era.”
As the
title would suggest, At The Edge Of Light is a place still shrouded in
darkness. “Much of the album does centre on that: the populist world view
evinced by politicians, that dark times are ahead. It’s very worrying,” says
Hackett.
“Look at
the situation in so much of America. The man who was ‘going to make America
great again’ has put 800,000 people out of work. That’s haunting.
“We don’t
mention names, but much of the album is symbolic lyrically, but there are other
things on there beyond politics: love songs and travelogues, so I don’t think
it’s a one-horse-race album.”
Songs for
this fully orchestrated album partly came out of conversations with his wife,
Jo, suggesting lyrics, then Hackett coming up with melodies. In addition, he drew
inspiration from the music of his youth. “I was born in 1950, and by the time
the Sixties were in full cry, you had Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Buffy Sainte-Marie,
doing wonderful versions of Dylan songs, with music carrying a deeper meaning
without being didactic…though there’s nothing wrong with boy-meets-girl songs,
but music changed for the better.”
Hackett
urges people to make friends across the world, rather than for Britain to
become insular in these toxic Brexit days. “The idea that we can just exist on
our own, sailing off into the Atlantic…if that happens, I think there’ll be a
rude awakening, once people realise what they have voted for. Be careful what
you wish for. Look at what’s happening in America, with people queueing up for
food in Washington. I don’t know what to say about that, but I hope people come
to their senses.”
Nevertheless,
the choice of the word ‘light’ in the album title indicates Hackett’s view is
not all doom and gloom. “I still remain cautiously optimistic about being at
the edge of light, rather than the edge of an abyss,” he says.
At The Edge
Of Light is an album where Hackett “pulled no punches, gave it everything, but
not in an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink way”, and he had a “great time doing
it as I thought ‘let’s give it the full monty’.”
He brought
such a scale to his Autumn 2018 tour too, performing Genesis and Hackett
material with a 42-piece orchestra, including an October show at London’s Royal
Festival Hall recorded for the newly released Steve Hackett – Genesis Revisited
Band & Orchestra: Live double album and Blu-Ray digipak.
Now he
re-visits Genesis again, this time Dancing With The Moonlit Knight at York
Barbican.
Steve Hackett, Selling England By The Pound, York Barbican, Tuesday 19 November, 7.30pm.
One-off collaborative tour: Catrin Finch, Seckou Keita and Vishtèn to play Pocklington next June
BBC Radio 2 Folk Award Winners Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita and special guests Vishtèn will bring their one-off collaborative tour to Pocklington Arts Centre next summer.
Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and Sengalese Kora maestro Seckou Keita, will perform with Canadian multi-instrumentalist powerhouse trio Vishtèn on Saturday, June 13.
Finch and Seckou, who played the National Centre for Early Music in York on October 20, were named Best Duo/Group in the 2019 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, while Seckou also received the award for Musicianof the Year.
Since forming their partnership in 2013, they have released two albums, Clychau Dibon that year and Soar in 2018.
Arts centre manager James Duffy says: “I saw Catrin, Seckou and Vishtèn’s first ever public performance together in Canada, as part of a Music PEI Showcase in October. The response that night was truly wonderful and deservedly received a standing ovation.
“It’s a fantastic collaboration that blends folk/roots and world music between these two highly regarded artists. Thanks must go to Focus Wales, Music PEI and Theatr Mwldan for bringing this show to Pocklington in 2020.”
In September, Finch and Keita travelled to Prince Edward Island on the east coast of Canada to meet and collaborate with Vishtèn, who are flag-bearers for the Acadian musical tradition globally.
Now, this collaboration will be heading to British shores in a one-off tour that will combine sets by both artists with a special set featuring new material by Finch, Keita and Vishtèn together.
In the Vishtèn line-up are twin sisters Emmanuelle and Pastelle LeBlanc, from Prince Edward Island, and Pascal Miousse, a direct descendant of the first colonial families to inhabit Quebec’s remote Magdalene Islands.
Pocklington’s audience can expect tight harmonies, layered foot percussion and a trademark blend of fiddle, guitar, accordion, whistles, piano, bodhrán and jaw harp.
Tickets for this 7.30pm concert cost £22 on 01759 301547 or at pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.
Kelly Jones: “Overcoming things and moving on”. Picture:Simon Bartle
THIS was a solo show, except that it wasn’t a solo show. First up, Dwight A Baker and Patricia Lynn’s country-noir duo The Wind And The Waves, from Austin Texas, thoroughly justified Kelly Jones’s invitation to tour with him: the best support act in ages at the Barbican, with song titles as sharp as This House Is A Hotel (for grumpy teens) and a queue at the merch-stall afterwards.
In Jones’s words, “this tour is about overcoming things and moving on from obstacles and building strength from that”. This sentiment is reflected in Don’t Let The Devil Take Another Day, the title of the upcoming Stereophonics album, out in October, and trailered here by a band who “learned the songs in five minutes”.
The title number and This Life Ain’t Easy But It’s The One We All Get conveyed Jones’s apprehensive yet defiantly hopeful tone on a night when he revealed as much in his storytelling from his back story, as darkly humorous, poignant and South Welsh-rooted as Dylan Thomas’s writings.
He opened by talking about once-a-week, Sunday childhood bath time, third in line behind his brothers for the increasingly dirty water, as he set about song writing from the age of eight when they removed their improvised “ghetto blaster” each week.
He now had 160 songs, from 12 or 13 records, to pick from, songs familiar and rarely performed from Stereophonics 22 years and his 2007 solo work, Only The Names Have Been Changed.
The names this particular evening were Jones on acoustic and electric guitars, stand-up and grand piano; Gavin Fitzjohn on piano, guitar and exquisite trumpet and Fiona Brice on violin and piano, constantly swapping places and roles, joined by drummer Cherisse Osei, hair blowing wildly behind her as if in a wind tunnel, and even she switched from one drum kit to another.
Rather than being restless or breathless, there was an arc and flow to the night, songs benefiting from new arrangements, such as Jones and Fitzjohn perched on high stools for a ukulele account of Rewind.
The stories were heartfelt, one taking in early days with Stereophonics’ Stuart Cable, his mother by the name of Mabel Cable and Keith Richards’ shepherd’s pie dressing-room rules, before his abiding grief at Cable dying too young poured into Before Anyone Knew Our Name. “I miss you man,” he sang, the pain still raw in that soulful voice, the best from Wales since his fellow Jones, Tom.
Kelly recalled his callow football days, playing up front of course, but this was the cue for debut single Local Boy In The Photograph, his tribute to the team’s right back who threw himself under a train.
Not only the tour, but so many of Jones’s everyman songs are about “overcoming things and moving on from obstacles”. Even his first choice of cover, Kris Kristofferson’s Help Me Make It Through The Night, a song his father sang in his working men’s club gigs, now carried that weight.
The second, Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around, had Jones and Patricia Lynn mirroring Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks to the max.
A medical emergency in the audience brought the show to a halt for 15 minutes, handled suitably respectfully by band and audience alike, and the usual 11pm curfew was subsequently waived, enabling a hits-heavy singalong encore of Maybe Tomorrow, Traffic and Dakota.
More frontmen of Jones’s standing should do shows like this: seeing him and his songs in a new light.
