Kate Rusby is an folk singer-songwriter from Penistone, Barnsley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. Sometimes called the “Barnsley Nightingale”, she has headlined various British national folk festivals, and is one of the best known contemporary English folk singers. In 2001 The Guardian described her as “a superstar of the British acoustic scene.” In 2007 the BBC website described her as “The first lady of young folkies”. She is one of the few folk singers to have been nominated for the Mercury Prize.
2008 saw the release of Sweet Bells, an album of traditional Christmas songs interpreted by Rusby. She has since released four more Christmas albums: While Mortals Sleep (2011), The Frost Is All Over (2015), Angels & Men (2017) and Holly Head (2019). Each December, Rusby embarks on a popular Christmas tour across the United Kingdom.
Kate Rusby Christmas concert perpetuates the tradition of Yorkshire carols, which means that each show evokes the spirit of a crowded pub. Kate sat in the corner of that crowded pub when she was a child, so the songs she brings to these shows are in her bones, a deep seam of personal experience to be mined. For over two hundred years, from late-November to New Year’s Day, North Derbyshire and South Yorkshire communities would congregate on Sunday lunchtimes, in their local public house, to belt out their own versions of familiar carols, carols that were often frowned upon by the church in Victorian times as ‘too happy’.
Kate’s happiness, her humour and her storytelling are a feature of her live shows. Each auditorium becomes her pub or her front room, and we are her welcomed and well-cared-for guests. Hugely spirited but undoubtedly family affairs, Kate’s concerts celebrate what makes Christmas so special and so much fun as she and her fellow musicians perform fabulous songs brimful of the goodwill and spirituality of the season and in doing so put smiles on faces and joy in our hearts.
