the unthanks at st george’s…

Ruth and I went along to St George’s last night to hear the Unthank sisters (Rachel and Becky) plus Niopha Keegan perform their amazing, unaccompanied harmonies. Just three voices on stage, singing to a packed audience.
My goodness, they’re good!
Stunning, haunting voices and beautiful, evocative songs (if you don’t know these Tyneside treasures, you might have come across their song ‘Magpie’ which accompanied the excellent television series, ‘Detectorists’?).
I can’t quite believe that the last time I’d seen them perform was in 2011 at Greenbelt!
The evening was an absolute treat – listening to music that gives you goosebumps!
Photo: The Unthanks (from our seats in the gallery).
PS: The one downside/disappointment to the evening was the sound system (fortunately, it didn’t affect the music, only the spoken introductions). We were sitting in the side gallery – right up at the very front – and it became clear (or unclear!), trying to listen to the spoken words of the pre-interval performers that, the voices were unintelligible (our friends sitting just a few seats away from us, plus our neighbouring audience members, clearly experienced the same thing) and I duly pointed this out to one of the (very helpful) stewards during the interval (and she absolutely agreed with me and advised the sound technicians accordingly!). It seemed that the best they could offer was for us to take up alternative seats (amongst the few unclaimed seats at the back corner of the gallery) if things didn’t improve – which they didn’t. In the end, we opted to remain where we were (with the excellent views over the stage) despite missing all the spoken introductions and jokes. I’d sat in a similar location a number of times (eg. to see Stacey Kent last October) and had never previously experienced any problems. St George’s is rightly noted for its brilliant acoustics and so this took the edge off what otherwise was a wonderful evening.