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.
