When: 7.30pm on Sunday 30 June 2013
Where: International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Engine House, Chorlton Mill, 3 Cambridge Street, Manchester M1 5BY

For our fourth visit to the Burgess Foundation, we’re excited to be helping local star Nancy Elizabeth launch her new album, Dancing.

Nancy Elizabeth’s new album, Dancing, has emerged incrementally since the release of its predecessor, Wrought Iron, in 2009. Seeking to repair and retreat after an intense period of travel and personal flux, Nancy created a bower in her tiny Manchester flat, with a piano at the centre, guitars hung on the wall, and her unique palette of instruments within easy reach. Flat broke and stuck at home, and using a computer to help her make music for the first time, she began to develop a new sound in her isolation.

Slowly, surely, she nurtured these twelve handsome songs, playing and recording almost everything herself. Remarkably, the resulting album is her most cohesive and most uplifting yet. It’s her lightness of touch as a musician, songwriter, producer and performer that sets Nancy apart. While the adventurous sounds she has conjured conspire to create a mesmeric physical effect, the emotional purity of the lyrics is just as powerful. Free of creative limitations, Nancy Elizabeth’s heart just pours out.

Headphones on, her balletic voice at the ready, the songs began to tumble out, with Nancy often working long into the night. Listening to Dancing, the sense of total immersion is tangible, as you fall headlong down a rabbit hole where gloriously detailed rhythmic patterns entwine with vocal symphonies.

After two and a half years working in seclusion, Nancy handed the precious sound files to her long-time collaborator Peter Philipson, who untangled the haphazard creation and carefully stitched the album together. First single The Last Battle heralds the album, a magnificent introduction to its trove of pure musical delights. A soaring, celestial-soprano array, the song recalls Ennio Morricone and Arthur Lee, enveloping you in its skillfully constructed soundworld.

Support comes from Dan Haywood. The Lancastrian songwriter/poet/ornithologist performs stripped-down selections from his epic big-band triple-LP New Hawks (praised as ‘livid with ideas’ by WIRE, ‘wild-eyed’ by Uncut and ‘as dour in texture as a North Sea shoreline’ by the Independent on Sunday), as well as debuting material from his forthcoming Dapple and North American songbooks.

This show takes place at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, a charity that encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess, the late novelist (best known for A Clockwork Orange), poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The foundation, situated just off Oxford Road, features a fully licensed cafe-bar and an engine room, which will host this concert.

SPECIAL OFFER: We’ve teamed up with Red Deer Club to offer a combined ticket for Nancy’s show and Liz Green‘s Burgess Foundation show on Saturday 22 June – it saves you £3.50 compared to two separate tickets. Click here to book this special ticket now.

Book tickets now. Tickets are also available from Common (no booking fee), Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, Seetickets.com, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

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