Claire Martin

Masterclass – few places left!! Sept 11th.

admin — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:26:43 +0000

Jazz Singers Workshop
Led by acclaimed jazz star Claire Martin

Saturday 11th September 2010 Workshop 10.30am – 5.00pm

A practical one-day workshop for budding jazz singers of all abilities. You will learn everything you need about jazz singing, sung voice techniques, performance tips and plus key information to help you ‘get the gig’.

Workshop leaders include Claire Martin, BBC Jazz Awards winner and radio presenter, Verona Chard, experienced jazz singer, actor and lyricist, plus Gareth Williams, jazz pianist, singer and arranger.

For further information please see here

Saturday 11th September 2010 Workshop 10.30am – 5.00pm
Workshop fees. £85 for participants, £35 for observers

Autumn Tour Dates Announced UK

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 07:40:34 +0000

Oct 29, MANCHESTER, Royal Northern College of Music

Nov 04, LEEDS, The Venue at Leeds College of Music
Nov 05, BIRMINGHAM, CBSO Centre
Nov 13, BRISTOL, Colston Hall
Nov 18, LONDON, Bloomsbury Ballroom, London Jazz Festival
Nov 20, TUMBRIDGE WELLS, Trinity Theatre,
Nov 21, YORK, National Centre for Early Music

John Lennon Songbook with the LPO in Liverpool

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 07:37:26 +0000

John Wilson conductor
Claire Martin singer
Curtis Stigers singer
Mark McGann narrator and singer

Script by Bob Eaton

7:30pm. Box office: (Box Office): 0151 709 3789. Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra John Lennon Song Book 70th Birthday Saturday 9 October 2010 7:30 pm Liverpool Philharmonic Hall John Wilson conductor Claire Martin singer Curtis Stigers singer Mark McGann narrator and singer A sell out in 2008, we’ve brought this concert back by popular demand on the 70th anniversary of John Lennon’s birthday. Join us for a very special evening of songs – a rare opportunity to hear classics including Imagine, Woman, Norwegian Wood, Jealous Guy, I am the Walrus and others accompanied by a full symphony orchestra and sung by some of the UK’s top vocalists.

Autumn concerts in Denmark for Claire and trio!

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 07:11:50 +0000

These concerts will be Claire’s first venture into the vibrant jazz scene of Denmark!

Sept 30th Aalborg, Huset www.huset.dk

Oct 1st Odense, Dexter www.dexter.dk

Oct 11th Aarhus Musickhuset Aarhus www.musikhusetaarhus..dk

Oct 14th Viborg www.viborgteater.dk

Last London shows this Summer!! Claire and Trio in Soho.

admin — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 07:36:48 +0000

The Pizza Express Jazz Club, Dean Street, Soho. July 30th 2010.

Claire performs with her trio for 2 shows at the legendary basement jazz club. This will be

her last performance this summer.

Early booking essential – 08456 027017

“…..Dry, wry urban songstress, worldclass and utterly peerless” TIME OUT LONDON

A Modern Art Jazz Times review

admin — Fri, 07 May 2010 00:10:57 +0000

She ranks among the four or five finest female jazz vocalists on the planet (it wouldn’t be overstatement to ere cognize her as Anita O’Day’s rightful heiress), and on the rare occasion she performs stateside, the crowds are invariably SRO. So it’s hard to fathom why Claire Martin, a household name in her native U.K. and a perennial British poll winner, remains so under appreciated on this side of the Atlantic. Maybe it’s because those visits are so rare, or perharps because her albums aren’t always easy to find. Well, with the advent of iTunes, almost her entire output is just a click away. As a starting point, you’ll be hard pressed to do better than her latest release.

Though Richard Rodgers, notoriously finicky about re-interpretations of his songs would surely be enraged by the Everything I’ve Got Belongs to You which opens A Modern Art, Martin’s impishly funkified treatment is marvelous. The rest of the play list bows to more contemporary compositions, most notably Mark Winkler’s tenderly distressing lowercase and Cy Coleman’s delightfully wry Everybody Today Is Turning On. Lauren Kinhan’s affecting As We Live and Breathe is ideally mated with a sharp, Bossa reinvention of Steely Dan’s Things I Miss the Most.

Equally superb are two self- penned additions. Edge Ways provides brilliant, backhanded condemnation of the chronically self absorbed, while the title track offers delicious appraisal of modern society’s celebrity obsession and the corresponding devaluation of genuine artistry.

Live at The Oak Room – New York Observer

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:12:59 +0000

For bracing jazz and potable musical phrasing, run don’t walk to the Algonquin this week for a lesson in great singing from the British sensation Claire Martin. Her appearances in New York are rare. Don’t even think about missing this one. The focus is on the dapper, sophisticated songs of the late Cy Coleman and his astutely seasoned lady lyricists-Peggy Lee, Carolyn Lee and Dorothy Fields. A few guys made the grade, too. A highlight is “With Every Breath I Take,” with David Zippel’s haunting lyrics, from the Broadway score of City of Angels. And it doesn’t get any better than Cy’s collaboration with Joseph McCarthy (the songwriter, not the satanic senator) on “I’m Gonna Laugh You Right Out of My Life,” a song for all seasons and all people, regardless of age, who have a little life experience under their belts. Ms. Martin sings them all, both solo and with her veteran accompanist Richard Rodney Bennett, until you don’t think you ever want to hear them any other way.

Instead of projecting her throaty voice into the mike, this splendid and rarefied stylist seems to coax every breath from inside the mike into the amplified open air. Surprise is the key element in her singing, even on raucous hip-grinders like “Nobody Does It Like Me” from Seesaw. Composed and unruffled even by Mr. Bennett’s most challenging tempo changes, she’s a vision as well as a musical prodigy. A cross between Michelle Pfeiffer and Virginia Madsen, she’s so beautiful, focused and expressive that you can’t take your eyes off her, even when she’s not singing at all. She can cut words in half an octave apart, like Annie Ross, stretch vowels dreamily or turn plosives into three syllables depending on her mood. Nothing comes out exactly as expected, whether she’s milking the nasty nectar from “When in Rome” or breaking your heart on the falsely cynical “Would You Believe?” (Would you believe I don’t give a damn?/ Well, you’re as big a fool as I am”). In addition to sending chills down a listener’s spine as one of the most original and hypnotic singers I have come across in years, she is a tremendous actress. An ace composer of classical music, jazz tunes and Oscar-nominated movie scores, Mr. Bennett is an agile partner, crooning rustily as dry as a martini, playing nimble chords and savoring songs like best friends. Unfortunately, he sings some of them in a voice that is often barely audible, and something alarming is happening to his enunciation. Still, he’s a literate and supportive piano-bench diva who can always be counted on to unveil a few songs that are welcome strangers. Intimacy is his forte, best exemplified when the two artists stray from the Cy Coleman canon at the end to brilliantly conjure a witchcraft of their own on “The Very Thought of You” and “I Thought About You.” For cosmopolitan tastes, this wise and cultivated engagement is altogether satisfying, heavenly and fulfilling. After so many cabaret acts, I leave feeling cheated. But with Claire Martin and Richard Rodney Bennett, the rewards are bountiful.

Live at The Oak Room – Cabaret Scenes

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:11:29 +0000

Claire Martin is one of the best jazz interpreters around. She hails from foggy London town settling into The Oak Room to collaborate with (Sir) Richard Rodney Bennett, pianist extraordinaire. “Witchcraft” concentrates on Cy Coleman’s early pop songs in the first half of the show and Ms. Martin obliges that “The Best Is Yet To Come.” She sings organically, creating riffs, hills and valleys on the erudite Coleman melodies. She has that I’ve been around look, creating an impression of nonchalant wisdom. She doesn’t rely upon fancy dress and glitter because she only needs one thing: her smoky jazzy colorations.

Cy Coleman collaborated with a variety of lyricists but his liaison with Carolyn Leigh produced much of the intimate banter for which they are celebrated such as “Rules of the Road” that Ms. Martin sang, Blossom Dearie style, showing off a subtle, amusing personality. A Carmen MacRae fan, the sad “Would You Believe” (lyric:James Lipton) presented prowess as a storyteller as she wailed “you’re a big fool as I am.”. Martin’s exterior easy style gave way on ballad “I’m Gonna Laugh You Right Out of My Life” (lyrics: Joseph Allan McCarthy) with quivering phrasing emphasizing the impact of the lyric she loves so well.

“Nobody Does It Like Me” (lyricist:Dorothy Fields), admittedly not in Martin’s jazz comfort zone, was given a humorous version, squeezing out each nuance of lyric and some new ones.

Live at the Algonquin – New York Times Review

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:10:33 +0000

“What goes on the road, stays on the road,” is how the English jazz singer Claire Martin described “When in Rome (I Do as the Romans Do),” one of 15 songs with music by Cy Coleman at Tuesday’s opening night performance of “Witchcraft,” her show with Richard Rodney Bennett at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, New York City.
“When in Rome” has lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, Coleman’s greatest collaborator and the only major American lyricist whose bon mots consistently match Cole Porter’s in capturing an attitude of jaded sophistication fraught with heartbreak. The more pain is exposed, the sharper the wit that covers it up.

Ms. Martin, who resembles a younger Jodie Foster, looks and sounds every bit the part of a well-traveled, emotionally vulnerable sybarite who might have spent a season accompanying the Rolling Stones on a world tour. “The Rules of the Road,” another jaundiced Coleman/Leigh evocation of the erotic life, mentions “tricks of the trade” and concludes: “So love is a hoax/A glittering stream/Of little white lies.” That realization, however, doesn’t diminish the temptation to keep on playing the game.

The show concentrates on Coleman’s early work, in which his elaborately syncopated melodies (”Witchcraft” and “The Best Is Yet to Come” are the most famous) and the sly, insinuating lyrics by Ms. Leigh and others constitute high-style songwriting repartee. And Ms. Martin’s subtle, beautifully acted interpretations give them their due.

Her blasé up-for-anything attitude began to melt with her rendition of “I’m Gonna Laugh You Right Out of My Life.” An early Coleman ballad with lyrics by Joseph Allan McCarthy, the song is associated with two of Ms. Martin’s greatest influences, Shirley Horn and Carmen McRae. When Ms. Martin’s shell cracked and raw emotion leaked out, she conveyed the downside of pleasure in shivering little phrases and a piercing emphasis on the words “beautiful joke.”

Mr. Bennett, a celebrated classical and film composer with a long history of accompanying pop and jazz singers, is a shadow vocal presence as well as the show’s pianist. A sensitive, truly intimate collaborator, he occasionally took the lead to sing in a slightly slurred husky murmur. The two voices melded in a final medley of non-Coleman standards, “The Very Thought of You” and “I Thought About You,” in which they answered one other in a reverberating train of reflection.

Live at The Oak Room – The New York Times

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:09:19 +0000

“When in Rome” has lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, Coleman’s greatest collaborator and the only major American lyricist whose bon mots consistently match Cole Porter’s in capturing an attitude of jaded sophistication fraught with heartbreak. The more pain is exposed, the sharper the wit that covers it up.