Kate Westbrook
STAGE SET
Kate Westbrook / Mike Westbrook Duo
Kate Westbrook (voice)
Mike Westbrook (piano)
Including songs by Kurt Weill, Mikis Theodorakis, Billy Holliday, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington and a number of Westbrook arrangements.
Mike Westbrook (piano)
Including songs by Kurt Weill, Mikis Theodorakis, Billy Holliday, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington and a number of Westbrook arrangements.
Kate Westbrook Recordings
Selected Recordings
Glad Day - Live
Three Into Wonderfull
The Nijinska Chamber
Cuff Clout
Selected Recordings
Says The Duke 2022
GRANITE
EARTH FELT THE WOUND
Says The Duke 2020
London Bridge Live in Zűrich 1990
KlangWeltReligion
Paintbox Jane
The School of Jolly Dogs
£5 +vat to stream and download in FLAC, Mp3 & more
1. September Song
2. Pirate Jenny
3. Clio's Cosmetics
4. On The Beach
5. Una Volta C'era Un Re
6. I Got It Bad
7. Nähe Des Geliebten
8. Un Aveugle Chant Pour Sa Ville
9. The Human Abstract
10. L'Egalite Des Sexes
11. Honest Love
12. Don't Explain
13. You've Been A Good Old Wagon
14. Casablanca
15. As Time Goes By
2. Pirate Jenny
3. Clio's Cosmetics
4. On The Beach
5. Una Volta C'era Un Re
6. I Got It Bad
7. Nähe Des Geliebten
8. Un Aveugle Chant Pour Sa Ville
9. The Human Abstract
10. L'Egalite Des Sexes
11. Honest Love
12. Don't Explain
13. You've Been A Good Old Wagon
14. Casablanca
15. As Time Goes By
Recorded at Studio La Buissonne. Pemes Les Fontaines. France.
ASC CD9
More Information about The Kate Westbrook / Mike Westbrook Duo
ASC CD9
More Information about The Kate Westbrook / Mike Westbrook Duo
Track Listing
Information
Reviews
POETRY IN DUO
No other artist has a talent as spirited, witty, virtuosic, multi-faceted, and vocally intense as the British singer Kate Westbrook.
No other artist has a talent as spirited, witty, virtuosic, multi-faceted, and vocally intense as the British singer Kate Westbrook.
The occasion for this high-powered English evening (Zurich March 20th 1996) with the DUO Kate and Mike Westbrook, is not only the 60th birthday due tomorrow, of the Grand Maestro of orchestration, Big Band leader, composer and pianist Mike Westbrook; but also promised is a new CD by the DUO 'STAGE SET' (ASC Records).
'Jazz Ballads and Songs from Theodorakis to Bessie Smith' is the sub-title of the show, with texts by Goethe, William Blake and Brecht, among others.
Indeed hardly any other musical personality has acquired the knack of linking European music culture, language and poetry as closely to Jazz as Mike Westbrook has. Kate Westbrook, who uses the possibilities of the expression of the human voice with stupendous and universal mastery, is no less impressive. Added to her mastery of articulation is her sense of poetry, text and language, of theatrics, pathos and parody. The term 'Jazz' is extended beyond all frontiers. A kind of Jazz inspired culture-fusion Art is being created and this is the attraction of Westbrook Music.
Johannes Anders
Zuritip ZURICH March 1996
Zuritip ZURICH March 1996
PLAY IT AGAIN SAM...
What the family business Westbrook and Westbrook has managed to build and extend over quarter of a century deserves to be called 'Gesamtkunstwerk', an all-round work of Art. Their music explores the entire range between extreme High Art and the most accessible Art, and it is always theatrical, even on record.
What the family business Westbrook and Westbrook has managed to build and extend over quarter of a century deserves to be called 'Gesamtkunstwerk', an all-round work of Art. Their music explores the entire range between extreme High Art and the most accessible Art, and it is always theatrical, even on record.
Mike Westbrook, born in 1936, is a master of orchestration and a master instrumentalist.
Kate, a singer who is expressive not to say expressionist, is equally at home with the Grand Gesture as with a biting analysis of her material. She is at home with great works and with small ones, with Rossini arias and with standards from 'the Great American Song Book'. Moreover, and what a rarity, she is keen to render the text as well as the music. In fact, amazingly, we sometimes understand a German text in her English-flavoured German better than that by many a German artist.
Kate, a singer who is expressive not to say expressionist, is equally at home with the Grand Gesture as with a biting analysis of her material. She is at home with great works and with small ones, with Rossini arias and with standards from 'the Great American Song Book'. Moreover, and what a rarity, she is keen to render the text as well as the music. In fact, amazingly, we sometimes understand a German text in her English-flavoured German better than that by many a German artist.
Westbrooks recitals are often a pleasing miscellany of cross-cultural elements in which each piece makes the next sound unusual and totally fresh. The pieces illuminate and renew each other. The effect is as intense as it is entertaining.
Now the two of them are back with a new CD, a recital 'A deux' looking at their life together, but also looking back to mutual passions,- from Brecht/Weill's PIRATE JENNY via ON THE BEACH of Theodorakis, with some Rossini on the way, with NAHE DES GELIEBTEN of Goethe, with Blake and Ellington, and with L'EGALITE DES SEXES of Paul Eluard and Bessie Smith's GOOD OLD WAGON.
There is a touch of Elegy as well, but it never becomes sentimental,- both of them are too intelligent for that, masters of 'Verfremdung' in the Brechtian sense. So it is no accident and should be taken with a pinch of irony, that STAGE SET begins with SEPTEMBER SONG. 'And the days dwindle down to a precious few ... ' and ends with 'A kiss is just a kiss -..', the cult song from the film 'Casablanca', AS TIME GOES BY ... "
Peter Ruedi
DIE WELTVOCHE Zurich 14-03-96
DIE WELTVOCHE Zurich 14-03-96
