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

Hello all, hope you’re coping with this unusually cold May – I’m really looking forward to warm weather at some point, and it would be nice if it arrived for the Bank Holiday weekend and Chippenham festival. Could do with being merry and summerish with JigJaw! Couple of solo gigs the weekend before that, then on into the summer festivals. Lovely that we’re also at the Furness Tradition festival in Ulverston on the weekend of July 10th and 11th. Busy weekend that, good luck to all you choir singers for the Street Choirs Festival in Sheffield, I’m sorry to miss it this year.

Nice gig organised with Silsden Singers, with Silsden Town Band (brass) and Silsden Community Productions doing scenes from “Right Up Our Street on the 24th of July – I’m looking forward to that one, the night before the gala, so should be a good weekend for Silsden. The Saturday before that I’m doing a harmony workshop in Lothersdale – gorgeous little place that houses the old waterwheel we sang for last year. We’re also doing Otley Festival this year again, on Sunday 19th of September. The sun always shines for Otley festival, yes it does.

I’m doing the Teigengl festival in Wales on Saturday 21st of August, and then on to Whitby for the rest of the week. I’ll be busy in Whitby both solo and doing some events with Sisters Unlimited colleagues Sandra Kerr, Peta Webb and Rosie Davis.

Pleased to say that I’ve just had an offer of a gig from the Star Club in Glasgow – not till next March, but that will allow me to try to get some other work around it. It would be good to be doing a little more in Scotland again. Speaking of which, I’ll be doing a harmony workshop day in Angus on the 30th of October. Really looking forward to working with a group of Scottish singers.

Also, on Saturday 27th November JigJaw will be doing a big song and dance workshop for 20,000 Voices (not literally – organisation of that name!). They haven’t got the venue sorted yet, but watch this space, it ‘s always fun and we can usually produce a little performance at the end of a day.

Anyway, more soon I hope, once the autumn gets a bit more organised.

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