Kate Westbrook
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KATE WESTBROOK

singer, librettist

Kate Westbrook studied Fine Art, and continues to exhibit her work in solo and group shows in Britain and abroad. Her musical career began in the mid 1970s when she joined the Mike Westbrook Brass Band. She has toured widely and recorded more than twenty albums.

Kate’s vocal range embraces Contemporary Music, Opera and Music-Hall, as well as Jazz and Popular Song. She sang the role of Anna in The Seven Deadly Sins by Brecht and Weill with the London Symphony Orchestra, arias by Rossini with the Mike Westbrook Orchestra at the Proms, and songs by the Beatles with the Westbrook Band in Off Abbey Road. Kate multi-tracked most of the roles in the television opera Good Friday 1663 (with libretto by Helen Simpson), recently released on CD as part of Jazzprint’s Westbrook Music Theatre series.

Kate was guest soloist in a series of performances in the Christus Pavillon at the Expo 2000, Hannover, in a work by composer Heribert Leuchter, KlangWeltReligion. She is currently working with Heribert on a new music-theatre piece that she premiered with the Lux Orchester in Aachen in May 2002.

Kate’s work on Chanson Irresponsable is the latest in a series of collaborations with Mike Westbrook, which include the libretto for the recent opera Jago, and settings of European poetry, as in such concert works as The Cortège and London Bridge is Broken Down. Their jazz cabaret Platterback is released on Voiceprint’s Jazzprint label and tours the UK in summer/autumn of 2002.

Kate has recorded a solo album Goodbye Peter Lorre for Line Music’s Femme label. On this she is accompanied by pianists John Alley and Mike Westbrook and the vocal group Fine Trash. Other albums include Music For Other Occasions, with Lindsay Cooper, the Duo album Stage Set with Mike Westbrook. Her latest recording project is Cuff Clout, a neoteric music-hall, in which her lyrics are set to music by eight composers from the worlds of pop, rock, jazz and classical music.

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