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Singer In Twenty Five Year Exile Returns To The Stage
Added: (Thu Mar 16 2006)
Catherine Howe
www.catherinehowe.co.uk
Catherine Howe is best known for her award winning song “Harry” which won an ‘Ivor Novello’’ in 1975. As an actress she appeared in many TV programmes including Dr Who (Ara), Dixon of Dock Green, Theatre 625, Wednesday Play & Z-Cars.
Catherine Howe returns to the stage with her band performing songs from her new album Princelet Street and four critically acclaimed albums,
What a Beautiful Place, Harry, Silent Mother Nature and Dragonfly Days
Sat 10th, June at 7.30 p.m.
MAC (Midlands Art Centre)
Cannon Hill Park
Birmingham
B12 9QH
Telephone: 0121 440 4221
Tickets priced at £9.50 with £8.00 concessions.
Plus
Quatro Guitarras
Midlands-based classical guitarists Nick Chamberlain, Frances Griffin, James Phillips and Leo Turner.
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After a self imposed exile of twenty five years actress and singer songwriter Catherine Howe has returned with her new album Princelet Street, Charles Donovan writing in the CD booklet notes says,
“Princelet Street is the work of an accomplished songwriter, with spiritual largesse to share and talent to burn. The album opens with a portrait of the East London street where Catherine’s ancestors lived. The journey continues with Say The Word – a song so good that it could be a potential standard - and the wistful, nostalgic C’est La Vie – a gently candid love-letter to a younger man. There are no make-weights or stop-gaps here. Not so much as one rambling thought or directionless line.”
Princelet Street.
Catherine Howe sees the album from that of a songwriter performing her craft, “Say The Word has a country feel, Princelet Street; Shine Like a Star; You Are & One Percent are very jazzy whereas Yorkshire Hills, Brothers (1850), Come Back Soon and All I Can Say have a definite folk root, all the rest are contemporary pop ballads.
Thinking about the basics of the album it has to be that it stems from a sense of history. With the exception of the two oldest songs 'Come Back Soon' and 'Shine Like a Star' all the songs spring from a sense of the importance of what history tells us. The suburban developments of the 60s and 70s are a testament to what happens when we modernise without possessing an appreciation of the qualities of what is already there. And I won't mention recent legislation”.
Princelet Street is in Spitalfields and crosses Brick Lane in London's East End. With Bethnal Green Road to the north, Whitechapel High Street to the south, Princelet Street has been home to generations of immigrants. Many of the buildings date back to the Protestant Huguenot silk manufacturers of the eighteenth century who fled persecution in France. The nineteenth century saw an arrival of Irish immigrants followed, in the 1880s and onwards, by Jewish refugees.
The area is now home to a large Bangladeshi community. Spitalfields remains a fascinating place. Dickens drew upon it for his novels; Jack London wrote about his attempt to survive it; Jack the Ripper stalked it.
In the 1970s and 80s, when its existence was threatened by modern development, Dennis Severs re-enlivened his house on Folgate Street. Behind 19, Princelet Street, stands one of the oldest English synagogues surviving. More recently Iain Sinclair and Rachel Lichtenstein co-authored Rodinsky's Room, a book about the search for David Rodinsky who, during the 1970s, lived at, and disappeared from, 19, Princelet Street.
Monica Ali has written about today's Spitalfields community in her novel Brick Lane, also Tarquin Hall in his Salaam Brick Lane. Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor is set within the streets of Spitalfields and revolves around the building of Christ Church, recently restored.
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For review copies of Princelet Street, images, interviews further information contact Pat Tynan Media
Phone 01895 636935 Mobile 07985 400297
pattynan@btinternet.com