Well, I come from an all-singing, all-dancing working class Yorkshire family. At the age of five my repertoire included Shirley Bassey and Eartha Kitt, artists whose songs I still perform from time to time. My current cabaret repertoire includes music created or made famous by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Edith Piaf, Suzy Solidor, Mistinguett, Josephine Baker, Yvette Guilbert and Bessie Smith.
I sing in French, German, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese and employ my linguistic skills in creating new interpretations of classic cabaret songs, making new translations of lyrics by composers and poets active during Germany's Weimar Republic and the bohemian Paris of the 1920s and 30s. My repertoire also extends to include a sprinkling of saucy British Music Hall numbers and contemporary compositions especially written for me, including songs by Anna Tabor and composer Peter Copley.
Over the years, I've sung with several groups and orchestras, amongst them Southern Winds, Musicians of All Saints, Nick Pynn's Box of Acoustic Delights and traditional Breton music with Penumbra. I've also sung (and continue to sing) in choirs; for many years singing alto in a 16th Century Acapella Choir led by Gregory Atkin and currently singing and performing as a member of the Brighton & Hove Russian Choir, led by Polina Shepherd.
My performance work has extended to theatre and music theatre with roles in The Beggars’ Opera and Elsie Piddock Skips on Mount Caburn (A27 Action Group), A Taste of Tides (adapted from the novel by Ann Quin and directed by Christine Fox with music by Charlotte Glasson, 1998), The Finnish Prisoner (community opera with music by Orlando Gough, directed by Susannah Waters for Paddock Productions, 2008), DeadHead (choral piece composed by Orlando Gough) and I performed for Crosspath Theatre in John Agard's riotous pagan panto, The Pied Piper of Londinium (2010).
My MySpace