We're in Aviva Studios, out by Castlefield and the canals in old Manchester. It’s a modern, beautifully appointed performance and exhibition space built on the site of the old studios where they used to film Coronation Street.
It looks nowt like The Rovers Return or The Kabin now, of course - more design by way of Hacienda nights and po-mo flights of imagination than Weatherfield.
But what’s happening onstage is still drama, albeit of a different stripe to that of Bet Lynch and Ken Barlow. Anohni is telling a story, one of many she’s told tonight about everything from nature to tea to Catholicism.
This one, this story, is set in New York and she’s talking about Little Jimmy Scott. You know Jimmy, right? That beautiful man with the glorious hurt voice. I remember seeing him in a NY jazz club back in the late 1990s, a room full of lads having the dinner (as they always do in NY jazz clubs), while Jimmy sang. This was art, this was life, this was beauty.
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Anohni remembers seeing Jimmy in rooms like that too. She talks of the shite record deal he had to endure, the manner in which he was blackballed by the record industry (which meant the beautiful Falling In Love Is Wonderful album was under wraps for decades), the way he went out to work as an elevator operator out in Newark, the late career renaissance thanks to a combination of Doc Pomus, Hal Willner and Lou Reed. She talks about singing with Jimmy (I remember seeing the pair of them together onstage at Carnegie Hall in 2005) and recalls him saying he was Billie Holiday’s brother-in-law (one for the fact checker).
Then Anohni takes a beat and sings Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child, a song Jimmy used to do. She sings it off-mic at first, standing back, pacing a little. It’s a true song to the siren, a song of wounded evocation and resigned grace.
It’s one of many such moments in a show where hearts soar and souls ping. Every song, every interlude, leaves you with stuff to pour over. Here’s hoping Anohni makes it to Ireland on this long overdue tour - perhaps a date in Donegal could be arranged?
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