Pioneering American singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega returns to the UK in 2016 with her ninth studio album ‘Lover, Beloved’.
This inspired album has derived from Suzanne’s life long interest in novelist and short story writer Carson McCullers. A woman who, revolted by the politics and racism of her upbringing in the American South, arrived in New york in her early 20’s and became one of the literary lights of the 20th century.
McCullers used the South as a lens through which to view the painful, nearly always unrequited, search for love in a world that often punishes individual self-expression and rewards repression and emotional compromise. She battled those limits in her life as well as her work – a personal heroism that makes her, in Vega’s view, a figure of great contemporary significance.
She was an instinctive rebel whose message of personal freedom resonates profoundly in our own insurgent age, nearly fifty years after her death at the age of fifty in 1967.
Suzanne said ‘I feel that McCullers’ ideas and thoughts are very modern, and she incarnates them in a way that other authors don’t. To use today’s parlance, her life and work embodied human rights on just about every level – race, gender, trans, queer, disabled, youth’
The ten songs on ‘Lover, Beloved’ are part of a two-act play in which Vega and another actress perform the role of McCullers at two historical moments that bookend her career. The album finds a sound that exists outside of time.
It’s traditional enough to suit the iconic quality of its subject; clever enough to capture her originality and daring; and contemporary enough to help establish McCullers as an avatar for this century as well as the preceding one.
With songs such as ‘Marlene on the Wall’, the Grammy nominated/MTV award winning ‘Luka’, the hugely successful album ‘Solitude Standing’, and acappella song ‘Tom’s Diner’ which was a worldwide remix hit for UK-based dance duo DNA in the early 90’s, Suzanne Vega has come to be regarded as the vanguard of a new generation of female singer/songwriters.
“Story-telling was made for Suzanne Vega – perfection”
Manchester Evening News
“She shows love, loneliness, and overall goodness in her timeless songs”
BBC Music
“States Of Being is a masterpiece…..fantastic”
Daily Express
Tour Dates:
October 2016
Sunday 9th
Edinburgh Queens Hall
0131 668 2019
Monday 10th
Manchester RNCM
http://www.rncm.ac.uk/whats-on/
0161 907 5200
Tuesday 11th
London Cadogan Hall
0207 730 4500
Thursday 13th
Birmingham Town Hall
0121 780 3333
All shows are on sale now through:
Ticketmaster- 0161 333 0731
See Tickets- 0203 7471 556
Ticketline- 0161 828 1205
