Christine Tobin
Encyclopedia
Christine Tobin is an Irish born jazz
singer from Dublin who has been part of the London
jazz and improvising scene since the second half of the 1980s. She has been influenced by a diverse range of singers and writers including Betty Carter
, Bessie Smith
, Leonard Cohen
, and poets WB Yeats, Paul Muldoon
and Eva Salzman
. She has established a reputation as a unique presence on the jazz scene with original songs, style and interpretative or original lyrics.
album Mingus
, which led her to purchase the Charles Mingus
album Mingus Ah Um
and then other jazz albums. She moved to London
in 1987 and sang in a band with Jean Toussaint
, Jason Rebello
, Alec Dankworth
and Mark Taylor before studying jazz at the Guildhall School of Music in 1988 and 1989. While at Guildhall, she formed a band with pianist/professor Simon Purcell, double bassist Steve Watts and drummer Phil Allen. Purcell encouraged Tobin to write lyrics for his tunes and set her on the path to writing her own material. She took a break from singing in 1990 to study anthropology
at Goldsmiths College
for two years.
Tobin was a singer with the band Lammas
for 10 years, led by saxophonist Tim Garland
and guitarist/poet Don Paterson
. In 1993 she formed a new band with pianist Huw Warren
, bassist Steve Watts and drummer Roy Dodds, recording the first two albums, Aliliu and Yell of the Gazelle, of seven on the Babel Label
with them. She then met guitarist Phil Robson with whom she has formed a strong musical relationship. Her album sleeves are usually designed by Gee Vaucher
and she has also worked with other members of Last Amendment
including Penny Rimbaud
.
During 2008, she toured England
performing her album Secret Life of a Girl, her first since Romance and Revolution in 2004 and the seventh to be released on the Babel label
, with her band of pianist Liam Noble, cellist Kate Shortt, guitarist Phil Robson, bassist Dave Whitford, percussionist Thebe Lipere and drummer Simon Lea. She later won the Best Vocalist Award at the BBC Jazz Awards 2008.
In 2010 Tobin released a CD Tapestry Unravelled, a duo with pianist Liam Noble. This is mostly the songs from Carole Kings 1971 Tapestry album with one Tobin original, Closing time.
and as a director of the Vortex Jazz Club
in Dalston
.
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
singer from Dublin who has been part of the London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
jazz and improvising scene since the second half of the 1980s. She has been influenced by a diverse range of singers and writers including Betty Carter
Betty Carter
Betty Carter was an American jazz singer renowned for her improvisational technique and idiosyncratic vocal style...
, Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith was an American blues singer.Sometimes referred to as The Empress of the Blues, Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s...
, Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
, and poets WB Yeats, Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...
and Eva Salzman
Eva Salzman
Eva Salzman is a noted contemporary American poet.Eva Salzman was born in 1960 in New York City, and grew up in Brooklyn where – from the age of 10 until 22 – she was a dancer and later a choreographer. She was educated at Bennington College and Columbia University, moving to Britain in 1985...
. She has established a reputation as a unique presence on the jazz scene with original songs, style and interpretative or original lyrics.
Career
Tobin began singing seriously in her early 20s. She discovered jazz through hearing the Joni MitchellJoni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...
album Mingus
Mingus (album)
Mingus is the tenth studio album by Joni Mitchell, and a collaboration with jazz musician Charles Mingus. Recorded in the months before his death, it would be Mingus's final musical project; the album is wholly dedicated to him....
, which led her to purchase the Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music...
album Mingus Ah Um
Mingus Ah Um
Mingus Ah Um is a jazz album by Charles Mingus, recorded and released on Columbia Records in 1959. It was his first album recorded for Columbia. The cover features a painting by S...
and then other jazz albums. She moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1987 and sang in a band with Jean Toussaint
Jean Toussaint
Jean Toussaint is a jazz tenor saxophonist. He was born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.Toussaint learned to play calypso as a child, and attended the Berklee College of Music in the late 1970s. In 1979 he played with Wallace Roney, and from 1982 to 1986 he was a member of Art Blakey's Jazz...
, Jason Rebello
Jason Rebello
Jason Rebello is a British jazz pianist, currently part of Sting's live and studio band, who has recorded a handful of albums under his own name. His debut album, A Clearer View was produced by Wayne Shorter....
, Alec Dankworth
Alec Dankworth
Alec Dankworth is an English jazz bassist and composer.Dankworth was born in London, the son of John Dankworth and Cleo Laine. He grew up in the villages of Aspley Guise and Wavendon, living at the Old Rectory, Wavendon, where his parents established the Wavendon All-Music Plan which includes the...
and Mark Taylor before studying jazz at the Guildhall School of Music in 1988 and 1989. While at Guildhall, she formed a band with pianist/professor Simon Purcell, double bassist Steve Watts and drummer Phil Allen. Purcell encouraged Tobin to write lyrics for his tunes and set her on the path to writing her own material. She took a break from singing in 1990 to study anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
at Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths, University of London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom which specialises in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1891 as Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute...
for two years.
Tobin was a singer with the band Lammas
Lammas
In some English-speaking countries in the Northern Hemisphere, August 1 is Lammas Day , the festival of the wheat harvest, and is the first harvest festival of the year. On this day it was customary to bring to church a loaf made from the new crop...
for 10 years, led by saxophonist Tim Garland
Tim Garland
Tim Garland is a British jazz saxophonist, composer and band-leader. He is also known for his innovative bass clarinet playing and for his prolific output as composer, blurring the boundaries between modern jazz and classical concert music.As a performer, he has worked widely both in Britain and...
and guitarist/poet Don Paterson
Don Paterson
Don Paterson, OBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet, writer and musician.-Background:Paterson was born in Dundee. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 1990 and his poem A Private Bottling won the Arvon Foundation International Poetry Competition in 1993. He was included on the list of 20 poets chosen for the...
. In 1993 she formed a new band with pianist Huw Warren
Huw Warren
Huw Warren is a jazz pianist and composer. A graduate of Goldsmiths College and Guildhall School of Music, he is known for his work with June Tabor, Perfect Houseplants, and various groups. Warren has recorded several albums under his own name on Babel Label, including projects with violinist Mark...
, bassist Steve Watts and drummer Roy Dodds, recording the first two albums, Aliliu and Yell of the Gazelle, of seven on the Babel Label
Babel Label
The Babel Label is a record label was founded in 1994 by Oliver Weindling. It primarily records and releases jazz albums from UK artists. Ongoing relationships include artists such as Billy Jenkins, Christine Tobin and Huw Warren. A close relationship has been forged with a number of musicians from...
with them. She then met guitarist Phil Robson with whom she has formed a strong musical relationship. Her album sleeves are usually designed by Gee Vaucher
Gee Vaucher
Gee Vaucher is a visual artist who was born in 1945 in Dagenham, East London.Her work with Anarcho-punk band Crass was seminal to the 'protest art' of the 1980s. Vaucher has always seen her work as a tool for social change. In her collection of early works Crass Art and Other Pre Post-Modernist...
and she has also worked with other members of Last Amendment
Last Amendment
Last Amendment is the working title of a series of collaborations by ex-members of the anarchist punk band Crass and others...
including Penny Rimbaud
Penny Rimbaud
Jeremy John Ratter , better known under his pseudonym of Penny Rimbaud, is a drummer, writer, poet, former member of performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, and co-founder of the anarchist punk band Crass with Steve Ignorant in 1977.-Biography:Rimbaud Jeremy John Ratter (born 8 June 1943,...
.
During 2008, she toured England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
performing her album Secret Life of a Girl, her first since Romance and Revolution in 2004 and the seventh to be released on the Babel label
Babel Label
The Babel Label is a record label was founded in 1994 by Oliver Weindling. It primarily records and releases jazz albums from UK artists. Ongoing relationships include artists such as Billy Jenkins, Christine Tobin and Huw Warren. A close relationship has been forged with a number of musicians from...
, with her band of pianist Liam Noble, cellist Kate Shortt, guitarist Phil Robson, bassist Dave Whitford, percussionist Thebe Lipere and drummer Simon Lea. She later won the Best Vocalist Award at the BBC Jazz Awards 2008.
In 2010 Tobin released a CD Tapestry Unravelled, a duo with pianist Liam Noble. This is mostly the songs from Carole Kings 1971 Tapestry album with one Tobin original, Closing time.
Other endeavours
She is also a promoter, running for just over a year in 2005 a club at the Progress Bar in Tufnell ParkTufnell Park
Tufnell Park is an area of north London, England which straddles the border of the London Borough of Islington and the London Borough of Camden.-Origins:...
and as a director of the Vortex Jazz Club
Vortex Jazz Club
The Vortex Jazz Club is a London venue that primarily features live contemporary jazz. The club's official website features book reviews and jazz CD reviews by critic Chris Parker....
in Dalston
Dalston
Dalston is a district of north-east London, England, located in the London Borough of Hackney. It is situated northeast of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London...
.
As leader/solo
- Aililiu (BabelBabel LabelThe Babel Label is a record label was founded in 1994 by Oliver Weindling. It primarily records and releases jazz albums from UK artists. Ongoing relationships include artists such as Billy Jenkins, Christine Tobin and Huw Warren. A close relationship has been forged with a number of musicians from...
, 1995) - Yell Of The Gazelle (Babel, 1996)
- House Of Women (Babel, 1998)
- Deep Song (Babel, 2000)
- You Draw The Line (Babel, 2003)
- Romance And Revolution (Babel, 2004)
- Secret Life Of A Girl (Babel, 2008)
- Tapestry Unravelled (Trail Belle Records, 2010)
As guest performer
- Lovers And Strangers (Hans Koller, 2001)
- all Lammas CDs
- Savage Utopia - Crass Agenda, 2004 (Babel LabelBabel LabelThe Babel Label is a record label was founded in 1994 by Oliver Weindling. It primarily records and releases jazz albums from UK artists. Ongoing relationships include artists such as Billy Jenkins, Christine Tobin and Huw Warren. A close relationship has been forged with a number of musicians from...
/Exitstencil) - Penny RimbaudPenny RimbaudJeremy John Ratter , better known under his pseudonym of Penny Rimbaud, is a drummer, writer, poet, former member of performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, and co-founder of the anarchist punk band Crass with Steve Ignorant in 1977.-Biography:Rimbaud Jeremy John Ratter (born 8 June 1943,...
's 'How? - Crass Agenda, 2004 (Babel LabelBabel LabelThe Babel Label is a record label was founded in 1994 by Oliver Weindling. It primarily records and releases jazz albums from UK artists. Ongoing relationships include artists such as Billy Jenkins, Christine Tobin and Huw Warren. A close relationship has been forged with a number of musicians from...
) - You're My Thrill - Peter Herbert, 2004 (Between The Lines)
External links
- (http://www.christine-tobin.com) Official website
- Babel Label biography