It’s one thing to have heroes – it’s quite another to write an album of songs celebrating them.
Sarah Jane Morris’ The Sisterhood project is her attempt to chart some of the best female singers, through new music inspired by their lives and works.
Her pantheon has respectable candidates – Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Peggy Seeger, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Bush and Sinead O’Connor feature in some form through the set. The risk here, of course, is that you are inevitably setting yourself up from comparisons with some of the greatest artists of our times.
While the songs draw on the style of her chosen acts they avoids pastiche and so while the vocals of her biographic homage to her certainly sounds more Morris than Mitchell, for example, musically you can feel the parallels.
It allows the endeavour to succeed on its own terms, with Morris’ own voice and style spliced together with her subjects. The contribution of co-writer and guitarist Tony Rémy shouldn’t be underestimated either; his skilled musicianship results in some great orchestrations.
My favourite performance of the night came not from the new songs however, but from the encore cover of one of Joplin’s popular numbers, Piece of My Heart. There’s certainly charm in the biographic numbers, but there’s a reason classic songs endure.
- The Norfolk and Norwich Festival continues until 25 May 2025.
