A Kate Rusby special, filmed live at Leeds City Varieties in September 2003, was broadcast on BBC Four. A DVD of this performance was produced by Smooth Operations and Pure Records.
We were contracted to capture this concert direct into Pro Tools so that Pure Records could re-mix it in their studios for the BBC 4 programme and the DVD release.
Kate is in fine chatty form at this concert, with her top-notch band in excellent fettle, providing an entertaining and superbly musical evening recorded at the City Varieties in Leeds.
Old songs, traditional-style new songs and some excellent musicianship for sixteen sets, plus extras including a video tour diary, acoustic session, interviews (including one with Andy Kershaw), biographies and behind-the-scenes footage.
Having made inroads into the British folk scene, Kate Rusby subsequently took her music onto the global stage. This performance draws on material from her early solo albums, preserving all of Kate’s wonderful talents and charm on film.
Reviews……
South Yorkshire folk singer-songwriter Kate Rusby celebrates a decade-plus as a recording artist and performer with this live concert, mostly adapted from her popular studio albums and replete with her typically evocative, emotional immediacy singing ancient ballads, sea shanties, and lullabies. Highlights include the infectious waltz, “Polly,” the sprightly, hopeful “I Courted a Sailor,” and Rusby’s crystalline vocal on “The White Cockade.” Backed by her outstanding, all-acoustic band, Rusby’s celebrated talent for making an old sound feel new again drives the delicate plaint “Who Will Sing Me Lullabies,” the pop-like “The Cobbler’s Daughter,” and the sad “Withered and Died,” which sounds very much like the passage of heartbreaking events into memory. Newcomers to Rusby may wonder if those songs in her repertoire having to do with dragons, knights, and fair maidens (such as this set’s “Sir Eglamore”) are terribly precious, but they actually prove as personally expressive as anything else she does.
The concert footage is superb, you hear every word and note. The audience are respectful and really into it. I have most of Kates CD’s and saw her from what felt like a mile away at Cambridge Folk Festival This is an intimate concert in Leeds and all the better for this. There is a lot of interview footage as well, so you can learn a lot too, or just enjoy the performance. A must for folkies!
I can’t speak highly enough about this DVD, it is truly brilliant. Not only do you get the wonderful voice of Kate Rusby but a backing band lead by, the incomparable John McCusker. Choosing to film this gig in Leeds was inspired as the partisan crowd really adds to the experience and, even though I was born on the other side of the Pennines, I still love this music. If you haven’t got, get it.
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Seven radio producers – all based in the north of England – have joined forces to launch a new co-operative venture – ‘Radio Wizards’. It’s equally remarkable that their aim now is to work together on every kind of sound production... except radio!
"It’s taken over a year to get to this point," says ‘wizard’ Mike Thornton, "but now we’ve got a viable business plan, we’ve launched our website and we’re already starting to attract commissions. As a facilities provider we decided to facilitate this partnership and set them up with a web site to help kickstart this excellent partnership."
