When: 7pm on Wednesday 20 December 2023
Where: Albert Hall, 27 Peter Street, Manchester M2 5QR

PLEASE NOTE: This show has now sold out!

We’re delighted to be presenting The Unthanks in Winter – at Albert Hall!

At this point in their almost 20 years together, it’s easy to imagine that The Unthanks must surely have done a seasonal winter album already, but no! Known for their genre- blurring creativity, The Unthanks premiere their dream-like winter fantasia – embracing both the dark and the light in the most ritualistic of seasons – moving in and out of focus – like a memory – a hymnal to our shared winter experience. Echoes of winter tunes known throughout the western world, mix with the traditional and the newly written, all passed with great care and love through The Unthanks filter.

The heartwarming pathos and glacial majesty present in their music to date makes a winter concert a mouth-watering prospect. The Unthanks are the perfect band to bring us an abstract new work capturing the magic and wonder of the turn of the year; the end and beginning of the circle of life.

The Unthanks have been described as ‘a take on tradition that flips so effortlessly between jazz, classical, ambient and post-rock, it makes any attempt to put a label on them a waste of time’.

Using the traditional music of the North East of England as a starting point, the influence of Miles Davis, Steve Reich, Sufjan Stevens, Robert Wyatt, Antony & The Johnsons, King Crimson and Tom Waits makes The Unthanks a unique band, earning them a Mercury Music Prize nomination and international acclaim along the way.

The Unthanks tells stories that capture children. They make music cutting edge enough to be BBC 6 Music regulars. They can equally be found on Radios 2, 3 and 4, reframing history and drawing together the worlds of folk, jazz, orchestral, electronic and rock music. The believability of their storytelling is admired by some of our best storytellers – Mackenzie Crook, Elvis Costello, Maxine Peake, Nick Hornby, Martin Freeman, Robert Wyatt, Charles Hazelwood, Ben Myers and David Mitchell, to name a few.

At the nucleus of a constantly evolving unit is the traditional upbringing of Tyneside sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank and the arrangements and writing of composer, pianist, producer and Yorkshireman, Adrian McNally.

‘They run from the very root of folk music to the very tip of the branch’ – Elvis Costello

‘It’s quite a rare thing now. They’ve really got everything you could want from music. And I’m very fussy’ – Robert Wyatt

Special guest is Katherine Priddy. Since emerging with her debut EP Wolf in 2018, UK artist Katherine Priddy has quickly become one of the most exciting names on the British scene. Declared ‘the best thing I’ve heard all year’ by Richard Thompson, who later invited her to join him on his Irish tour in 2019 and UK tour in 2021, Priddy’s haunting vocals and distinctive finger-picking guitar style have seen her sell out a headline tour and support world class artists including The Chieftains, Loudon Wainwright III and Vashti Bunyan. Over the past two years, she has performed at the BBC Proms and played well-earned spots at prestigious festivals in the UK and abroad such as the Glastonbury Acoustic Stage, where she also performed live on BBC Radio 2, plus at Green Man, Cambridge Folk, where she was awarded the Christian Raphael Prize, End of the Road and Beautiful Days.

Her much anticipated debut album, The Eternal Rocks Beneath, was released in June 2021 on Navigator Records to great acclaim. The album singles received 200-plus plays across national radio including BBC 6 Music and BBC Radio 2, and upon release, the album received a five-star review in Songlines, a four-star review in the Observer, reached No. 1 in the Official UK Folk Charts and No. 5 in the Americana charts. Folk Radio UK made Priddy ‘Artist of the Month’ and said of the debut LP: ‘Foundations rarely come stronger than this. A debut of true substance, it’s like searching for a simple shelter and stumbling upon a diamond mine.’ The album was later chosen as Album of the Week on RTE Radio 1 in Ireland, and made the list of Top 10 2021 Folk Albums in Mojo Magazine as national radio plays continued months after the release.

2022 got off to a flying start with Priddy taking her music abroad for the first time with a series of shows in Australia, including a performance at Port Fairy Folk Festival, as well as a showcase in Kansas City USA as part of Folk Alliance International. This was then followed by an invite to perform one of her songs as part of the world-renowned BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra. Now in 2023, Priddy’s momentum is showing no signs of slowing. April brought with it a new single on Chrysalis Records as part of a double LP of Nick Drake covers from artists such as Self Esteem, Aldous Harding, John Grant, Bombay Bicycle Club and more, as well as a show with Guy Garvey at The Roundhouse. Her live performances are engaging, moving and amusing by turn, delivering original songs with emotional maturity, depth and particularly noteworthy lyrics. Despite the delicate nuances of her sound, Katherine Priddy is not a fragile wallflower, but a determined young woman making her mark.

‘Utterly brilliant… one of my favourite voices in contemporary music’ – Guy Garvey

This show is promoted by Hey! Manchester, Manchester Folk Festival and Albert Hall.

This is a 14+ show. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

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