Janet Russell
New CD now available: HARCD 052 Love Songs and Fighting Talk

Hello again, sorry, I’ve let this get out of date. I’m blaming lots of rehearsal and prep. time with JigJaw, Leon concert combinations, Sisters Unlimited and choirs! All very lovely and enjoyable, and looking forward to some great summer gigs.

Choirs are getting ready for the Street Choirs festival which is in Whitby this year, what a great setting it will be, and lovely to keep it at the seaside after Brighton last year. If you like vocal music in droves, come to Whitby on the 11th and 12th July, it’ll be real fun – there are some very creative and humourous choirs, as well as really moving and beautifully sung pieces. Four of us Natural Voice Practitioners are running a day workshop in Dent Memorial Hall on July 19th , and we’d love to see as many singers there as poss, so contact me if you’re interested, we’ll keep the cost very reasonable.

"STOP PRESS" The Komedia Bar cancelled on us at short notice, so we have moved the 1st of July gig for Leon to The Latest Bar in Brighton which is slightly bigger.. Same line up as the London concert at the Tricycle, which was sold out. As well as the concerts at the Sage Gateshead on the 6th November and the Raise Your Banners Festival in Bradford on the 7th November, we also have a gig at the Square Chapel in Halifax on Wednesday 2nd December hosted by Calder Valley voices, another chance for northerners to help Leon celebrate his 50th year of performance and songwriting.

Sisters Unlimited are in Sidmouth from Monday 3rd August to Thursday 6th, doing concert spots at the Bedford, and also a workshop or two. We’re all at Whitby Festival as well, from Saturday 22nd August to Friday 28th, so we’ll be doing Sisters Unlimited spots from the Wednesday of that week, and looking forward to celebrating the sufragettes anniversary with Alison McMorland there, as well as singing one or two numbers from the book “My Song is My Own”, which is 30 years old this year.

Plans are hotting up for JigJaw at Towersey festival, we’ll be doing concert spots and ceilidh spots on the evening of Saturday 29th, then throughout Sunday 30th and Monday 31st August we’ll be running vocal and dance workshops as well as performing. I’ll be doing solo spots there as well. We’re also doing Stowmarket Traditional Music day in Suffolk on September 5th which I think promises to be a fabulous gathering of trad musicians, singers and steppers. Jigjaw will also playing a couple of southern club gigs in November, see tour dates.?

Hope to be able to put up a few more club bookings over the winter months when I next update. I do like the odd few days away.........and to be honest, I think Jim, Tom and Alfie like a bit of peace at home.

See you somewhere soon I hope
Janet

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Janet Russell
Singer, vocal workshop leader, arranger.

Janet first made a name for herself on the folk circuit in the ‘80’s as a young singer songwriter writing with hard-edged humour about issues affecting women. Her “Secretary’s Song” was the most requested song on “Folk on 2” in 1987/8, and “Breastfeeding Baby in the Park” has been taken up by the pro-breastfeeding lobby nationally and internationally. Her work on Scottish traditional material with Scottish singer Christine Kydd has received huge critical acclaim, particularly in her native Scotland, and in the US.

Janet has now worked on the folk scene professionally for more than 20 years, starting in Edinburgh pubs, in 1980/81, and has experience of folk clubs, arts centres, concert halls, church halls and village halls of all sorts and sizes in the UK, Europe, and the USA. Throughout this time Janet has worked with other musicians, such as Sisters Unlimited colleagues Sandra Kerr, Rosie Davis and Peta Webb, and Scottish singing partner Christine Kydd, and also toured the show “Take These Chains from My Heart”, written by partner Jim Woodland with storyteller Taffy Thomas. Janet worked as musical director for Mikron Theatre for ten years, and is recognised as an accomplished vocal harmony workshop leader. She is a member of the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network and a director of Yorkshire Dales Workshops, “promoting participation in folk arts”. At the end of 2001 Janet produced the first English performances of “The Christmas Truce” with Coope Boyes and Simpson. “Well done. Professional, moving, beautifully sung.... Best wishes - Roy” (from Roy Bailey) a show which received a standing ovation at the Sheffield Raise Your Banners Festival in November 2001. The show ran successfully again in November 2002. In March 2005 the same team put on two performances of “Hearts of Coal” celebrating the lives of miners and mining communities with the Roses and Thorns choir, a magnificent group of 80 voices from across northern England.

Janet leads three community choirs, in Silsden, Burnley, and Settle and continues to perform and to facilitate voice and harmony workshops whilst bringing up her two sons with partner Jim Woodland.

Discography:
Solo recordings include:
"Love Songs and Fighting Talk" - Harbourtown Records, HARCD 052
“Gathering the Fragments” – Harbourtown Records, HARC 003
“Bright Shining Morning?” – Harbourtown Records, HARCD 026

With other artists
“Janet Russell and Christine Kydd” – Greentrax CDTRAX 011
“Dancin’Chantin’” – Greentrax CDTRAX 077
“Take These Chains from my Heart” a narrative tape with songs about a performer’s fightback from a stroke. With Taffy Thomas, storyteller. TT Tapes 006
“The Stones of Callanish” (various artists) DOG 005/6
“No Limits” with Sisters Unlimited, – Harbourtown Records, HARCD 013
“No Bed of Roses” with Sisters Unlimited – Fellside FE104

“The most striking feature of Janet Russell’s arresting voice is a lower register whose distinctive power and edge make dramatic listening” Tony Rose, The Guardian

Recordings available from Harbourtown Records:

New CD now available:
HARCD 052 Love Songs and Fighting Talk
HARCD 003 Gathering The Fragments - Previously cassette and vinyl only - now re mastered for CD and re-released August 2005
HARCD 026 Bright Shining Morning?

and with Sisters Unlimited, (Peta Webb, Sandra Kerr, Rosie Davis, Janet Russell)
HARCD 013 No Limits

See details in the catalogue

Janet's Tour Schedule