CABARET VILLE MAGAZINE. P290. CONT'D FROM P289

Kate And Mike Westbrook: Britain's National treasure.

Ms Westbrook is an art phenomenon.  Eloquently and quite accurately, Mr Marino Guida wrote: " Kate’s smoky vocals and wide linguistic range are never less than exciting, her cabaret-influenced pyrotechnics being used to full effect on her Goodbye Peter Lorre album, with songs performed in four languages. [...] The way she spits out scenarios of alienation and hard-bitten ultimatums deserves to rank alongside Lotte Lenya, or Teresa Stratas’s more polished interpretations of Weill. Imaginatively stepping into Peter Lorre’s plain white Mr Moto suit and spectacles, she delivers a set of pieces that are steeped in Expressionism and express the pain of enforced compromise that burdened Lorre in Hollywood. [...] Westbrook also gives Cole Porter’s ’Love For Sale’ a much-needed revamping: even Vic Godard’s version lets the first verse slink by almost unnoticed, while her [Kate’s] more emphatic delivery teases out more mileage from Porter’s inspired words:
  ’When the only sound in the empty street
  Is the heavy tread of the heavy feet
  That belong to a lonesome cop,

Ms Kate Westbrook's official biography tell us that she  studied Fine Art and indeed continues to exhibit her art regularly. Kate Westbrook's musical career began in the mid seventies when she joined Mike Westbrook's Brass Band. Working in a number of styles over the years including contemporary music, Jazz, Music Hall and Opera, Kate has released a number of albums with Mike Westbrook, Lindsay Cooper, and Fine Trash and also in a solo capacity. In fact over the last twenty odd years Kate has managed to record over twenty albums. Kate has worked with some of the best musicians in the world and amongst them are the London Symphony orchestra on the Seven Deadly Sins written by Brecht and Weill and the television opera Good Friday 1663 that has subsequently been released as part of Jazzprint's Westbrook Music Theatre series. Moving into the more mainstream Kate has also recorded songs by the Beatles with the Westbrook band and also Arias by Rossini with the Mike Westbrook orchestra. Kate Westbrook also performs regularly with the Westbrook Trio which has clocked up over twenty years of concerts and recordings. Her most recent superb CD "Cuff Clout"  is a modern take on English Music Hall, Music Hall for the 21st Century if you like. Working alongside John Winfield, Kate produces a number of settings either in a solo capacity or as a duo with John moving through a variety of different musical settings and utilising a number of different composers who have set Kate's words and texts to music.

They include Lindsay Cooper, husband Mike Westbrook, Barbara Thompson and also features musical contributions from John Winfield. Mike Westbrook and Barbara Thompson in fact the twenty or so performers represent a cross section of the UK's most accomplished performers in the rock, jazz, classical and pop fields. The album was also engineered and directed by Barbara Thompson's husband respected jazz-rock drummer John Hiseman and features some of Kate Westbrook's finest and most varied vocal performances to date. The Westbrooks are more than prolific. They are phenomenal. They never stop producing, creating and amazing us. Among their most memorable works, I should quote the "PLATTERBACK" which could be one of the highest points in their career. This is a superb vocal and musical creation blended and nourished with natural elegance, touching and warm lyricism and enchanting musical arrangements. "PLATTERBACK" is a small treasure chest containing in its sweet and magical secret drawers, rosaries of beautiful refrains, honest and comforting lyrics and tenderly eloquent and evocative drops of musical notes and soft virtuosity dressed in  romantic compositional escapades.  CONTINUES NEXT