After an enforced delay in 2020, Caitlin Smith is delighted to be touring New Zealand with Brave Caitlin Smith’s Imaginary Band, to sell-out audiences.  They will be performing at The Gate Conference Centre on Thursday, 13 May, at 7.30 pm.

The Band consists of Caitlin Smith on piano and vocals, Lance McNicholl on guitar, and Steve Cournane on percussion and cymbals – a dream team performing jazz and folk music.

Celebrated Auckland jazz vocalist Caitlin Smith is one of the country’s best known performers and has coached hundreds of singers, including Anika Moa. Teaching, poetry, writing her beautiful, poetic lyrics as well as performing are all part of her ‘facing the music’ – no small feat as she is legally blind.  She is inspired by Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen.

Of her background, Caitlin says,

“My father was a professor of English at Auckland University for over two decades, and Ma is a fiercely bright and vivacious read-headed opera singer.

Session, gigging and touring musician and film score composer Lance McNicholl has been a go-to guitarist in New Zealand since the 1980s.

Steve Cournane is a drummer and composer who began playing with the Alpaca Brothers in Dunedin, in 1984.  Steve won a Tui for NZ Jazz Album of the Year in 2002 for the album Stereoscope by CLBob. This group released three albums and performed relentlessly around the country over a ten-year period.  In 2007 he moved to Lima, Peru, where he survived as a musician while studying the coastal Afro-Criolla music for another seven years. He moved to Auckland in 2017 and currently plays cajón with Isla Flamenca (with Ian Sinclair) and drum-kit with BOAT and Bill Direen. 

Caitlin’s latest album You Have Reached Your Destination comes complete with lyric sheet, and a separate printed collection of Caitlin’s original poetry.  This year marks the release of a callaboration/CD with the Auckland Jazz Orchestra East of the Sun. The concert is brought to Cromwell by Arts on Tour NZ Trust and Arts Central, and funded by Central Lakes Trust and Creative NZ.  Tickets online at www.artscentral.co.nz

Comments are closed.

You may also like