Royal Welsh College Of Music & Drama, Cardiff
Tues 6 Feb
Poetry and music make compelling bedfellows. Irish-born, New York-based jazz vocalist and composer Christine Tobin has dedicated the last five years of her career setting music to the poems of Pulitzer Prize-winning Paul Muldoon’s verse. The pair were invited to perform a collaborative piece at the 2011 Kilkenny Arts Festival, and after receiving a PRS commission to write new music, Tobin approached Muldoon to continue their collaboration. The result is 2016’s Pelt album: a dreamlike, playful musical tribute to Muldoon’s celebrated poetry.
Blending boundaries between melody and poetry has become a passion project for Tobin, and her efforts have not gone unnoticed – before her sessions with Muldoon, her spellbinding settings of poems by WB Yeats earned her a British Composer Award. Tobin’s sound references blues, folk, jazz and Americana, and her husky, slow-burn delivery turns thoughts to Leonard Cohen. In fact, her 2014 offering A Thousand Kisses Deep is entirely in homage to him.
However, the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama gig – her only show in Wales – will focus on the stylistically varied Pelt. Promises Promises and breakup-themed After Me are characteristically languid and mournful, but don’t settle in too comfortably, as full-blast rocker Zoological Positivism Blues is sure to shock your system into full alert.
Tickets: ÂŁ12/ÂŁ10 concessions. Info: 029 2039 1391 (LB)