Nancy Elizabeth + Dan Haywood

Nancy Elizabeth’s new album, Dancing, has emerged incrementally since the release of its predecessor, Wrought Iron, in 2009. Seeking to repair and retreat after an intense period of travel and personal flux, Nancy created a bower in her tiny Manchester flat, with a piano at the centre, guitars hung on the wall, and her unique palette of instruments within easy reach. Flat broke and stuck at home, and using a computer to help her make music for the first time, she began to develop a new sound in her isolation.

Slowly, surely, she nurtured these twelve handsome songs, playing and recording almost everything herself. Remarkably, the resulting album is her most cohesive and most uplifting yet. It’s her lightness of touch as a musician, songwriter, producer and performer that sets Nancy apart. While the adventurous sounds she has conjured conspire to create a mesmeric physical effect, the emotional purity of the lyrics is just as powerful. Free of creative limitations, Nancy Elizabeth’s heart just pours out.

Headphones on, her balletic voice at the ready, the songs began to tumble out, with Nancy often working long into the night. Listening to Dancing, the sense of total immersion is tangible, as you fall headlong down a rabbit hole where gloriously detailed rhythmic patterns entwine with vocal symphonies.

Support comes from Dan Haywood. The Lancastrian songwriter/poet/ornithologist performs stripped-down selections from his epic big-band triple-LP New Hawks, as well as debuting material from his forthcoming Dapple and North American songbooks.

This show takes place at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, a charity that encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of the late Anthony Burgess. The foundation, situated just off Oxford Road, features a cafe-bar and an engine room, which will host this concert.

Price: £7 adv
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