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On Friday 25th July you get a second chance to see
Heather's Gira con Gershwin concert,
first performed at the Arundel Festival .
(see below for more about the concert)

Click on the Ropetackle image above for tickets.



La Vie en Rose won a BAFTA
for Original Score by Christopher Gunning
Heather featured on the soundtrack with four other singers.


Gira con Gershwin!

On the 29th August 2007, Heather appeared at the Arundel Festival in an exciting new jazz programme taking the timeless songs of George Gershwin on a tour of South America.

The concert featured breathtaking new arrangements specially written for the Arundel Festival by her pianist Joss Peach and bass player Steve Thompson . They enriched your favourite Gershwin melodies with exciting Latin colours and rhythms.

Completing this dynamic line up were the considerable talents of Ben Reynolds on Drums and the sublime Joe Auckland on Trumpet.

Here's what the critics said:

"Standards from the Gershwin songbook, all very familiar but performed in a refreshing new style, resulted in an outstanding concert for the festival music programme.
The town's historic parish church seemed an unlikely venue but, as it turned out, proved surprisingly satisfactory and acoustically ideal for the Latin rhythms fused with Jazz improvisation.
Gira can Gershwin took the audience on a chairbound (in a pew, actually) tour of South America, with a masterly jazz quintet - a vocalist and four musicians - performing George and Ira classics.
For example, Nice Work If You Can Get It was interpreted to a calypso rhythm, But Not For Me became an Argentinian Tango and I've Got A Crush On You was styled after a Brazilian Samba.
The result was an unusual, stimulating and invigorating evening that followed the year's music theme of journey around Europe and the Americas.
Leading the group was Worthing born, Shoreham based vocalist Heather Cairncross, a former member of the Swingle Singers, whose wonderful clarity, extraordinary range and distinctive style seemed to me like a sort of combination of Cleo Laine, Ella Fitzgerald and Edith Piaf. Wonderful!
No less accomplished were the musicians, often individually engaged in a duet with the voice, notably for The Man I Love with guitarist and bass player Steve Thompson (who comes from Watersfield near Arundel) and for Embraceable You performed by Heather in tandem with amazingly dexterous pianist joss Peach.
Someone To Watch Over Me provided one of several great trumpet breaks for Joe Auckland while Midhurst drummer and percussionist Ben Reynolds was given ample opportunity to demonstrate his considerable skills in some solo passages.
The programme include no fewer than four songs from the Gershwins' opera Porgy and Bess and ended with Our Love Is Here To Stay, the final song composed by George by George before his death from a brain tumour.
Arundel Festival music committee chairman Nick Plumley revealed that it was the first concert of the week to attract an audience of more than 100.
And Heather Cairncross declared "It's lovely to see so many people and I'm delighted they seem to have enjoyed themselves so much."

Brian Shewry
Littlehampton Gazette 6/9/07

 

 


 


BBC Southern Counties Radio Christmas Broadcast

On the 16th December Heather appeared as the guest soloist for the BBC Southern Counties Radio Carol Service at Chichester Cathedral. The concert will be recorded and broadast on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The retiring collection was
donated to the extraordinary work of the Chestnut Tree House Children's Hospice. Click on their logo to visit their website and find out more about this inspiring place.

The very talented songwriter Mark Allen wrote a special song for the occasion which I recorded with equally talented guitarist Richard Durrant.

It is available for MP3 download at only 94 pence and all proceeds go to the Chestnut Tree House.

Click here to download Across the Miles - You're Never Alone

Click here to watch a Video of the recording session on Google Video

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