Kate Dimbleby

Our album Beware of Young Girls was chosen as one of ten best albums of the year in Sunday Times by Clive Davis!

We are doing a special offer to celebrate until Christmas. 10% off all signed albums from our website Just put “Top10″ in the box marked “discount code” when ordering.

Lovely 4 stars by Clive Davis in the Times for the new show “Beware of Young Girls : the Dory Previn Story” finishes at Leicester Square Hippodrome tonight! Tour dates to be announced soon.

To read our review in the Stage CLICK HERE

Our new Album is officially released today! To hear songs from the album and to order a copy of the album as a CD or download from our Bandcamp site, click here…

We’ll be doing a live show in a brand new West London for a week starting 15th-21st July.  Venue to be announced shortly.  Please email angels@katedimbleby.com to be kept informed.

I just heard the news that Dory Previn died today, Valentine’s Day.

It’s only 2 weeks since I sent a pre-release copy of my new CD to her devoted and wonderfully supportive husband Joby Baker, and only a few days since he received it with generous praise.

Of course it is always a shock to hear that someone has died, no matter how old they are or how ill they have been but in Dory’s case, it is especially so.

I have spent the past year totally immersed in her autobiographies and songs and have been moved at how very alive her voice still feels, 40 years on from the release of “Mythical Kings and Iguanas”. I guess a part of me still hoped I might meet her. But sadly for me and the rest of the world, Dory has left.

Her wonderful music and words very much live on not just for her fans but for every new listener who hears them. I urge anyone who hasn’t already to go out and buy her albums. What an extraordinary and unique woman.

I did an interview with Claudia Winkleman about the new show. You can listen again here

Kate Dimbleby: I’m a Woman, at the New End, NW3

Clive Davis

4 stars
Link

A decade has gone by since the singer Kate Dimbleby caused a stir in an intelligent monologue cum floor show about the life of Peggy Lee. Since then motherhood has intervened, although there’s nothing remotely mumsy about her exhilarating new entertainment, a cocktail of blues, jazz, country, singer-songwriter pop and the sort of earthy, post-feminist humour that makes the Desperate Housewives look like members of the Salvation Army. In the wrong hands, it could easily turn into garish pastiche and parody. But Dimbleby is an assured and charismatic vocalist who can make the leap from a full-decibel tribute to Bessie Smith to an intimate confessional from the Dory Previn songbook.

The keyboard player Naadia Sheriff leads a charmingly laid-back group in which guitarist Chris Allard covers the waterfront while Sophie Alloway, on drums — who looks too demure to wield a stick — keeps everyone in line with minimal effort. Dimbleby — daughter of David and Josceline Dimbleby — adds some autobiographical snippets to the narrative as she explains how a terribly English public schoolgirl survived a wayward youth. Marriage may have brought a measure of domestic contentment yet the Rubens-esque performer still has a lust for life: men sitting within flirting distance of the stage may find themselves becoming props for a moment or two. Trust me, it is a pleasurable experience.

Cal McCrystal directs with the lightest of touches, and the lantern lecture display of photos of the singer’s role models, from Nina Simone to Dolly Parton, conceals some neatly judged in-jokes. A homage to Sophie Tucker — “last of the red-hot mommas” — gives Dimbleby a chance to vamp things up. Yet she also has the courage to tackle I Will Wait for You, the classic ballad from Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, in the original French.

Her own composition, Hold On, is a supremely confident sketch of the pressures and joys of home life. Mischievous as ever, she encourages her double-bass player Jonty Fisher to switch to ukulele on the duet, Tonight You Belong to Me: echoes of Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters keeping a straight face as they serenade each other in that cult film The Jerk.

Box office: 0870 0332733.

Kate Dimbleby: I’m a Woman runs until October 3

Researching music for the new show throws up quite a lot of material for blog posts…

One of the best things about it is trawling YouTube for clips of old TV performances – it throws up random moments of brilliance, like this one of Pearl Bailey and Dinah Shore.

Before we took Fever! to Edinburgh, my record company introduced me to Geoff Eales and suggested we make a recording of the material from the show. We went into the studio and ideas started flowing. The songs that I had been performing on stage for so long seemed to gain new life.
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