Official Programme
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OFFICIAL PROGRAMME Hi Everyone, 2002 has been a year of fantastic achievement for me and this journey I’m on is certainly never a predictable one. I am always amazed at the opportunities and places my music can take me, never more so than the events of this past year. With Who I Am charting Top 10, touring both with Jamiroquai and headlining in the spring, the Mercury Music Award nomination and an inspirational trip to Brazil with the charity Christian Aid looking at problems over there with poverty and HIV/Aids, the past 18 months has allowed me to experience things that will stay with me forever. It has taken a lot of hard work, and there’s a lot more striving still to do but it’s been worth it. I’d like to thank all the people that have helped me along the way and those that continue to support me. Your support means the world to me. I’d like to welcome you to the tour and I hope you enjoy the show. What a great way to end the year - we love being on stage and we aim to give you a great time! See you next year with a new album and more shows… Peace ‘n’ love Beverley Knight An awesome voice, an already great artist, yet one who has used that self-claimed time away to con- tinue the all-important process of maturing and growing. Certainly, she’s been missed in her tempo- rary absence, but the good news is that this three-times Mobo award-winner is here among us again. Not only that, but, as a blossoming and very centred 29 year old, she’s sounding even better than ever. Why wouldn't she be? Since last time around, she’s charmed (and been totally awed by) Nelson Mandela, sung Happy Birthday to a delighted Mohammed Ali, duetted live and on record with Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay, and done a whole lot of getting to know herself too. "All of which has brought me to a very good place indeed!" This much - and more - is evident from her fabulous album, ‘Who I Am’. The fact is that Beverley Knight has made it back again, and triumphantly so. "I’ve been through many, many changes, and you can hear them all right here", she admits of the living-and-learning process she has undergone these past two and a half years. "I’ve found out lots about the industry I work in but also, and more importantly, about me myself-and-I. Perhaps most significant in all of this was the fact that, during it all, I came out of a long term relationship. That was a big old thing for me, believe me! As the title suggests, it’s a collection which deals primarily with the question of identity. "With the people and experiences that have shaped me, and with where I am headed next," she confirms. That said, it’s a journey with a projected happy ending. "Because I’m pleased to say that I’ve come out on the far side with my soul intact, with a clear sense of exactly who Beverley is, and (she laughs here, as if in gratitude) with the smile still on my face!" Good news, then, for the university graduate turned homegrown r’n’b heroine - a woman who, when looking for musical role models, turns more readily to artists like Annie Lennox, (as well as greats such as Aretha and Chaka) than to whoever it is that media opinion is electing as the latest funky diva-du-jour. "Man, that’s not where I’m coming from at all! What Prodigal Sista did (with its two top 20 hits 'Made It Back'and 'Greatest Day') was break me out of that specialised, ghettoised box that all British black women artists find themselves dropped into, and which I’d been fighting for so long to escape from. Those Mobo awards, (Best R'n'B act in ‘98 and ‘99 as well as a Best Album Award for ‘Prodigal Sista’), were a start Then there was my insistence on playing live whenever and wherever possible. Yes, it costs a whole lot more to take your music to the people in that way, but that’s how the women who inspired me did it. They didn’t just sing and dance to backing tracks in a club. They were out there fronting a real band, holding a show together and working on captivating their audience. And that’s how I intend to do it too." If the picture that you’re forming is of an artist more interested in developing her own talents than in following fashion, you are on the right track. Says Beverley, "My feeling about all of that is that when something or someone is super-hot, it or they can very soon grow cold. I prefer to see myself as kind of a back-burner, quietly keeping up a steady but intense heat!" And true enough, on the top selling singles so far, the temperature is near-enough at boiling point. They provided the perfect taster for 'Who I Am', a set that showed just how far the girl from Wolverhampton had come. The album features one strong song after another - some written and recorded in collaboration with top industry names here in the UK (D-Influence, Dodge and C -Swing for example) others with the cream of the crop in the U.S. From Nashville - Country Music Award winner Craig Wiseman with whom Beverley co-wrote the classic ‘Shoulda Woulda Coulda’ – or Philadelphia (James Poyser, who has worked with the likes of D'angelo, Lauryn Hill and Jill Scott). "Songs are the key to it all with me, that’s why I’ve taken my time in coming back with this. Quality is appreciated by record buyers, and quality can’t be rushed. Hopefully, when the results are out there for everyone to hear, fans will feel that their patience has been rewarded." Among those waiting patiently to hear ‘Who I Am’ was a steadily-growing list of famous admirers from Bowie and Prince to Michael Stipe who she met at London’s open-air Celebrate South Africa Day concert back in April 2000. Jay Kay has to be more than a little smitten too. He invited Bev to guest on two of the tracks from his recent Jamiroquai album ‘A Funk Odyssey’ and support him on his UK & European arena tours. All of which is great, of course. But perhaps the best measure of where the sista herself is coming from can be taken from the reaction to finding herself at a private audience with the truly legendary Nelson Mandela. "It knocked me sideways that, through music, I had got to meet one of history’s liv- ing legends, a man who future historians will still be writing about in 500 or more years’ time. And how had it happened? It was because I, a woman from Wolverhampton, had dared to have a dream that was bigger than those that everyone else around me was carrying with them." By her own self-assessment, Beverley Knight has come a long, long way. And who would dare to set a limit on just how far that extraordinary talent could carry her still? Alan Jackson ‘Who I Am’ entered the UK album charts at number 7 on March 17th 2002 and was certified gold status within a few weeks, the sales are now verging on platinum status. The first single, ‘Get Up’, was released in October 2001 and was a top 20 hit and a club smash, riding high in the club/dance charts. The video was nominated for a CAD (creative design award) for ‘Best Urban Video’. The second single, ‘Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda’, was Beverley’s first UK Top 10 hit. A huge Top 5 airplay record, it was one of the highest rotating singles of the year. The third single, ‘Gold’, was released on 24th June 2002. It scored Bev another top 30 hit and sent ‘Who I Am’ back into the Top 20 album chart. Following highly successful support tours in Europe and the UK with Jamiroquai, Beverley undertook a headline tour of the UK in May. This was followed by appearances at various European festivals through the summer including Glastonbury, T In The Park and V2002 in the UK. The latter stages of 2002 see no sign of Beverley slowing down. She was recently nominated for the prestigious 2002 Mercury Music Award. In October Beverley returned from a life-changing trip with the charity Christian Aid to Salvador in north-eastern Brazil, an experience that she found both moving and extremely informative. Beverley's trip allowed her to experience first hand the amazing projects that have been set up to combat a country plagued with extreme poverty and illness. Whilst in Brazil she visited organisations including GAPA-BAHIA, an AIDS prevention project, and CESE, an organisation that campaigns against domestic violence. Upon returning from her Christian Aid Trip, Beverley had the honour of performing at a benefit event for a Nelson Mandela Children's fund, which again allowed her to meet with her idol and inspiration. Beverley has also recently travelled to New York where she recorded a new version of her single ‘Shape of You’ with Wyclef Jean. Originally planned as a straightforward remix, Wyclef and Beverley soon reworked the entire track -its production, lyrics and melody – hence "Shape Of You - Reshaped’. The pair also shot the video, (which also features new Clef signing, 19 year old rapper ‘Hollywood’).