Camille O’Sullivan delivers Loveletter in song to Hebden Bridge and Leeds City Varieties in memory of Sinead and Shane

Camille O’Sullivan

IRISH/FRENCH chanteuse and actress Camille O’Sullivan brings her new show, Loveletter, to Hebden Bridge Trades Club on September 7(doors 8pm) and Leeds City Varieties Music Hall three nights later (7.30pm).

In her intimate soiree of storytelling in song, the ever-courageous chameleon reimagines works by her favourite writers, Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, Radiohead, Jacques Brel, Arcade Fire and Rufus Wainwright, with intense, dark drama, complemented by new originals.

In the wake of their passing last year, Camille will pay her respects, and sends love, to her dear, departed friends Sinead O’Connor and Shane MacGowan, having toured for many years The Pogues.

Performing with long-time collaborator and dear friend Feargal Murray, 49-year-old Camille will be presenting a “different type of show to her previous incarnations, with a more spiritual energy, transforming each song into an intense, vulnerable experience with joy and pure passion,” say promoters Bound & Gagged.

“Camille has created a very intimate, pated-back, heartfelt show. It captures an honest response to her experiences over the isolation of the last few years, yet captures the joyous and little moments of happiness that makes life worth living.”

Billed as “raunchy and dangerously fragile with an exceptional voice”, Camille’s prowess as a gifted interpreter of narrative songs of loss, love, joy, light and darkness has made her “the Queen of the Edinburgh Festival” (BBC); taken her to Sydney Opera House, the Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall and La Clique, the cabaret and circus spiegeltent in Leicester Square, London, and brought her the Herald Angel award for her Royal Shakespeare Company solo performance of  The Rape Of Lucrece.

As seen on the BBC’s Later…With Jools Holland in 2009 (In These Shoes) and 2015 (God Is In The House), former architect and painter Camille is equally adept at rock and hymnal renditions.

The Hebden Bridge and Leeds gigs are part of a nine-date September tour. Box office: Hebden Bridge, 01422 845265 or thetradesclub.com/events/Camille; Leeds, leedsheritagetheatres.com/whats-on/camille-osullivan-2024/.

Did you know?

CAMILLE O’Sullivan was born in London, to Denis O’Sullivan, an Irish racing driver and world champion sailor, and Marie-José, a French artist. She was raised in the town of Passage West, County Cork. After finishing secondary school, she studied Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.

Sam Carter finds himself in Home Waters on solo tour at Black Swan Folk Club tonight

Sam Carter: Performing solo at Black Swan Folk Club tonight

BBC Folk Award winner Sam Carter plays the Black Swan Folk Club, Peasholme Green, York, tonight on his Home Waters spring tour.

Rutland-born, narrative-driven songwriter Carter has been called the “finest English-style fingerpicking guitarist of his generation” by fellow folkie Jon Boden.

Over 15 years, he has toured the world, appeared on Later…with Jools Holland in 2012 and recorded and performed with folk luminaries Richard Thompson, Eliza Carthy, Martin Simpson and Nancy Kerr.

Now based in Sheffield, Carter released Home Waters on his own Captain Records label in May 2020, having earlier made the albums How The City Sings (2016), The No Testament (2012) and Keepsakes (2009) and two EPs, Live At The Union Chapel and his 2008 debut, Here In The Ground.

Sam Carter with the album artwork for Home Waters

When Carter envisioned Home Waters as “a search for a sense of belonging and stability in unfamiliar territory”, he could not have known how prescient that would turn out to be.

Recorded pre-pandemic in a converted church in rural Northumberland by producer and multi-instrumentalist Ian Stephenson, Carter’s live acoustic guitar and vocals sit at the heart of the recordings.

Many of his performances were left unadorned, while Stephenson’s cinematic string arrangements created rich emotional landscapes on other numbers.

Carter embarked on the first leg of the Home Waters tour last autumn, accompanied by the specially assembled Home Waters String Quartet. The tour coincided with the release of the album Home Waters Live and the premiere of Carter’s accompanying lockdown concert film, Home Waters In Concert. For the tour’s spring second leg, he is in solo mode.

Doors open tonight (21/4/2022) at 7.45pm; tickets cost £12.10 on 01904 658338 or on the door.