Corinne bailey rae how does it feel

There are songs that move from dark to light, and from silence to joyful chaos. The classically trained pianist, composer and bandleader, 79, has always played from the heart. Guitarist Lionel Loueke is one of among several musicians joining Hancock for a show featuring career highlights and overlooked deep cuts.

Vula Viel is a British trio whose polyrhythms take their cue from the buzzing wooden keys of the gyil xylophone of northern Ghana, which bandleader Bex Burch takes into territories including punk, free jazz and minimalism. Jazz in the experimental sense of the genre, it finds Pop crooning about love and sex, having his own fun on dirge-like single James Bond and reciting Dylan Thomas over improvised soundscapes.

Nights in the round at St James the Great always come imbued with a pinch-me quality but this show by fearless Chicago trumpet player and electronics artist Branch, above, is set to be more magical than most. ES Money. The Escapist. The Reveller. The Optimist. ES Best. Choose your subscription. Trial Try full digital access and see why over 1 million readers subscribe to the FT.

For 4 weeks receive unlimited Premium digital access to the FT's trusted, award-winning business news. Digital Be informed with the essential news and opinion.

Delivery to your home or office Monday to Saturday FT Weekend paper — a stimulating blend of news and lifestyle features ePaper access — the digital replica of the printed newspaper. Team or Enterprise Premium FT. Pay based on use. Does my organisation subscribe? Possessing a charming Audrey Hepburn-esque poise and a textured, Billie Holiday-styled voice she was the antithesis of her outspoken, party-going contemporaries, Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse.

That may well be because, during her teenage years, Rae was more likely to be singing in church than joining her peers getting wasted on cider. Born in Leeds in , to an English mother and St Kittian musician father, she started attending a Brethren church when she was The disarmingly genial Rae was always happy to talk openly about herself: whether remembering her childhood immersed in her father's Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder 45s or her short-lived teenage incarnation fronting a riot grrrl band, Helen.

She was also open about her enormous admiration for her jazz saxophonist husband, Jason Rae. The pair, who married in when Rae was just 22, had met when she got a life-changing job in the cloakroom of a Leeds jazz club whilst doing her English Literature degree at the city's university. Just as the jazz club provided an environment where, for the first time, she felt she truly fit in, so Jason inspired her with his passion for music and encouraged her to perform herself.

Now, after three years off the road, and with the release of her second album imminent, Rae is back on the promotional treadmill. Perching herself on a leather chair by the window of a trendy London hotel, she's as warm and welcoming as I remember her. But there's an unspoken nervousness hanging in the air. In March , Rae's husband was found dead in a friend's flat after an accidental overdose of alcohol and methadone.

The coroner's declaration that Jason had been a "naive user" offered little comfort. And although Rae's album was nearly half finished before that fateful day, The Sea is infected with her loss; tempered by her experience and weighed down by its context.

Understandably, the singer is reluctant to talk about her husband's death — she'd be forgiven for not doing interviews at all. Yet despite her wariness, the singer seems composed. Rae nods: "Today I feel more solid," she says. Friendly and confident, Rae wears no make up, and while she remains femininely fashionable, the pretty dresses she used to favour have been replaced by a sophisticated black cardigan and black peg-leg trousers.

Success has allowed Rae to indulge her love of fashion, but it was neither something she courted nor expected. It was weird for me that I was seen as this safe, mainstream sort of thing. Enjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a day free trial. Rae might have found her popularity bemusing, but with her radio-friendly tunes and breezy videos, her broad appeal was assured. And Rae enjoyed her success. Crucially, her album sales bought Rae creative freedom.

So I never felt I had to match that first record in terms of commercial success," she says. Rae explains she wanted her second album to be an organic process. Even the way I was writing was different. This time I didn't collaborate with anyone, I would just walk around my house, seeing what came in.

What "came in" were soul-searching, confessional and emotionally dense songs. The album's title track was the first song Rae wrote. It's a surging epic about the death of her grandfather in a boating accident while her aunt watched helplessly from the shore.