Back at the wonderful Howard Assembly Room after a short break, to see an artist with whom I was totally unfamiliar, but who obviously has a dedicated following, as the place was packed, and the atmosphere buzzing.
Karine Polwart is a Scottish folk singer who, it appears, also does a lot of other work nurturing new talent in that genre – including both of her children. She began her professional music career 25 years ago with a band called Malinky, but has been in quite a few collaborations since then, including one with Mary Chapin Carpenter. Tonight, however, she was performing solo, singing songs from her back catalogue. When I say performing solo, that is not strictly correct as she encouraged anyone familiar with her work to join in. This included the chaps on either side of me, to whom I would say, don’t give up the day jobs!
Ms Polwart is probably the best supported female singer I have seen at this venue, and probably the most humble. I have moaned in the past that some of her predecessors have thought that anything they did – even tuning their guitar – or said, however banal, was highly amusing or cool, when it was just basically pathetic. This artist really is amusing and cool, but doesn’t act as though she is. Her stories between the songs were often hilarious, but mainly full of background as to where, when and why they were written. One, about a wren, was penned after a trip to London during which she neither saw nor heard a wren. She needed to go to the Smoke, but was not flush with cash, so had been forced to take a chance by booking a Mystery Hotel on a website, which turned out to be a cracker, overlooking St Paul’s Cathedral. She went on to say that she had always been fascinated by the Whispering Gallery in said building so she got up early in order to be at the front of the queue at opening time. Instead of marvelling at the treasures on the ground floor she made a bee line for the Gallery and, being the only tourist there, got chatting to the security guard, who demonstrated the acoustic properties to her. They managed to spend quite some time whispering stupid stuff to each other from opposite sides of the dome, having a great laugh, until the gallery began to fill up with the other tourists.
The connection between the Cathedral and the small bird was that the architect was Sir Christopher Wren, which put her in mind of the ancient fable about the election of King of the Birds, which was won, not by an eagle as you might suspect, but by a humble wren.
The repertoire was very varied, dealing with subjects from the death of one of her neighbours, who was in her eighties but still farmed in the traditional way, shunning the use of machinery, through to the song she wrote in her car to relieve the stress of having just played two gigs on the same night, many miles apart, in front of a combined audience which just numbered double figures. It went on to win an award! There was another one about Donald Trump, not taking the easy route by mocking him, but by exploring the place in Scotland from which his mother came and comparing the rocks in that area, standing strong, proud, silent and assured, to his weak, insecure shallowness. The environment played a large part in her inspiration with birds, animals and forces of nature being major influences.
Several instruments, both electric and acoustic, were used to accompany her singing. There were also a cappella renditions which highlighted, even more, the purity of her voice.
Sadly, this was the penultimate solo concert on her tour, the final one being the following evening in Berwick, but if you have a look at https://karinepolwart.com/dates you will see that she is touring with Spell Songs, so get a ticket if you can.
For a sample of her work, have a look at this performance about a heron, which she said looked as though it was doing absolutely nothing – until it wasn’t! Gorgeous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDjfGEcRL7Y&list=RDEM-T4Qo9WS94LIn4fRXG3SEQ&index=1
The observation about the formerly fired, but re-elected, POTUS is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oBXOIbAtZw
For more details on Karine Polwart see https://www.karinepolwart.com/
Details of forthcoming shows at Howard Assembly Room go to https://www.operanorth.co.uk/event-tag/har/
Feature image from Howard Assembly Room. Photographs by Stan Graham.
Tyke It To The Limit 