Concert Calendar
Q&A with Kathryn Williams - June 2019
Click here to visit radiogabriel.com to read Q&A articleSisterhood Press
SARAH Jane Morris is one of this country’s leading creative forces. She should be cherished, smothered in bubble wrap and preserved, because individuals don’t come along like her very often – someone who is constantly willing to experiment and reinvent themselves in the quest for musical excellence. Principled, always pushing boundaries and a great advocate of live music.
Marking 30 years since first appearing at Ronnie Scott’s in London’s West End, she returned to the iconic venue on Wednesday November 6 with a remarkable album to perform. The Sisterhood comprises songs about 10 female artists who have framed Sarah Jane’s musical journey from band The Republic in the early 1980s, through to the Communards and her long and distinguished solo career.
Albums such as Bloody Rain, Sweet Mystery (The Songs Of John Martyn) and Compared To What (a collaboration with Antonio Forcione) should adorn most record collections. The Sisterhood should join them. It’s a revelation.
The Sisterhood is a work of tender love and utter respect that pays tribute to some of the world’s most iconic female artists: all swashbuckling pioneers who have left big musical footprints in the sands of time.....
Click here to read full review on Close Up Culture website >
Released yesterday to coincide with International Women’s Day, The Sisterhood will surely prove to be one of the brightest jewels in Sarah Jane Morris’s varicoloured discography.
A labour of love which Morris has been contemplating for two decades, the album presents a tribute to “my ten singers, my essential lodestars”, as she puts it, acknowledging and honouring female artists past and present who have inspired her own musical journey. Wonderfully arranged and stylistically diverse, Morris and her co-writer/co-producer Tony Rémy pull off a remarkable feat of crafting 10 songs which tell each singer-songwriter’s story while simultaneously capturing their musical and lyrical essence.
The multilayered title track serves up a deliciously funked-up homage to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, while the trailblazing Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith, is celebrated in “Couldn't Be Without”. A monstrous backbeat and stacked up horns underpin “Tomorrow Never Happens”, a paean to Janis Joplin tellingly programmed directly after Joplin’s greatest musical inspiration.
As well as glorious tributes to Nina Simone (“So Much Love”), Rickie Lee Jones (“Jazz Side of the Road”) and Billie Holiday (“Junk In My Trunk”), “Rimbaud Of Suburbia” draws aofascinating line between the singular sound-world of Kate Bush and the striking free verse of the precocious French poet of the title, whose 1872 poem, Bonne pensée du matin, is heard in its entirety.
View original review on theartsdesk.com
Celebrating female artists and visionaries that have proven inspirations throughout her life and career, Sarah Jane Morris’ ‘The Sisterhood’ finds her at the pinnacle of creativity.
A representation of her musical foundations, the 10 songs on the record see the chart-topping singer pay tribute to Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Annie Lennox and Kate Bush.
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On International Women’s Day 8 March 2024, British soul, jazz and R&B singer Sarah Jane Morris launched her new album The Sisterhood.
It is her tribute to ten iconic women singers and songwriters, who have had a massive influence on the development of the popular song. This is Morris’s lock-down project. She and her husband artist Mark Pulsford spent the months of isolation studying the lives of pioneering singers and musicians, women whose music is world famous, but whose stories are less well known. Together Morris and Pulsford then wrote a series of song lyrics, each an illuminating, sometimes shocking tale from the lives of these remarkable women.
Morris then got together with her long time co-writer/co-producer/guitarist Tony Rémy to write the music. Each song would be absolutely contemporary, it would also reflect the styles, forms and influences of the artists depicted. The ten women chosen are: Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Annie Lennox and Kate Bush – representing a wide mixture of styles of popular music.
To honour the legacies of these stars, whilst creating new work demands a breadth of experience of different popular musical forms as well as great versatility in performance styles. Clearly Morris and Rmy have the necessary skills.
Sarah Jane Morris is arguably most remembered for her pipe-belting performance on The Communards’ 1986 chart-smash ‘Don’t leave me this way’. However, since those heady days Morris has released fifteen solo albums that traverse a range of elements: jazz, pop, rhythm & blues, soul, 2014’s Africa-dedicated ‘Bloody Rain’ and a folk tribute to John Martyn in 2019. No rest for the committed.
Her new long-player out on the appositely named Fallen Angel label, ‘The Sisterhood’ is suitably released on International Women’s’ Day and is an artistic nod to her myriad influences, aesthetically, politically, vocally.
Ten sonic salutes to trailblazers, path-forgers and cultural cornerstones Morris herself terms her ‘lodestars’: Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Annie Lennox, and Kate Bush..........
.........‘The Sisterhood’ is a wonderful walk down memory lane, a wistful wander through past mistresses’ magnificence and sadly a depressing reminder of oppression, suppression and repression. Morris rights wrongs and sets thing straight in style.
Contact
- info@sarahjanemorris.co.uk
- For bookings, please email bookings@sarahjanemorris.co.uk
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