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

Hello all you busy festival goers and carefree holidaymakers – and also everybody who’s still stressed out with work and organising families, and already thinking about arrangements for back to school and college/uni! Just managed to snatch a quick 5 days time out in the Outer Hebrides (lovely, peaceful, boats, buses, mountains, seals basking on little islets and chasing fish round our boat in totally clear water off the coast of Harris) between the end of term concert with Silsden Singers and rehearsals with Sisters Unlimited who are together at Whitby this year for Thursday and Friday of the Folk Week.

JigJaw had a great time at the Furness Tradition festival and are looking forward to a couple of gigs on London’s south bank in September – see the gig list! Meanwhile, STOP PRESS, I’m going to be doing voice workshops at Broadstairs Festival in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately I have this work due to Roger Watson’s ill health, and I’m very sorry to hear this, however, I’m looking forward to the festival and to attending some singarounds in the afternoons and evenings whilst I’m there. All best wishes to Roger, hoping he gets better soon.

On the day Whitby Festival starts I’ll be at the Teigengl Festival in mid Wales. This is great for me as I haven’t sung in Wales for several years, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll cross the breadth of the UK to get back to Whitby for the Sunday evening – I’ll be doing solo spots and work with Sisters Unlimited at the end of the week.

September brings London gigs with JigJaw on the 5th and 11th, and work with Silsden Singers on the 18th in Keighley and 19th at Otley Folk Festival. On October 1st I will be at the Black Diamond Folk Club in Birmingham, and on the 23rd and 30th I’ll be doing harmony workshops in Ingleton and Perth (Scotland). On Sunday 7th November I’m in Edinburgh for the Carrying Stream Festival. It will be great to be back in the city where I did my first festival spots and concerts. Hoping to see lots of old friends and looking forward to the event. See the gigs list for events to the end of the year, there’s several voice workshops and events with JigJaw.

On February 5th 2011 JigJaw are booked to do a day and evening event in Bristol. We’re expanding into new territory here, as the group has never played in Bristol so far, and the event will include both a day of workshops for dance and song, and an evening concert and dance. Hope to see anyone in the south west who likes the sound of what we’re doing.
See you at Broadstairs or Whitby, I hope – have a good summer break.

All the best
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