One of Ireland’s greatest ever jazz and blues singers, Mary Coughlan, will play a homecoming gig next month as part of her Irish tour celebrating 40 years in music.
Live dates have been announced for Dublin, London, Belfast, Limerick and Coughlan’s home town of Galway where she will perform at the Róisín Dubh on Sunday, April 14, at 7.30pm.
Often described as the greatest female vocalist that Ireland has ever produced, Coughlan proudly stands alongside some of the world’s most iconic jazz singers.
She is unique in blending whisky-blurred, smoke-seared, husky notes with the laconic wit of Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee. She draws on a line of deep, down and dirty blues singers stretching back to Bessie Smith with the sardonic, bitter-sweet defiance and despair of Edith Piaf. Yet Mary Coughlan delivers it all in a delicious and unapologetic Irish drawl: sceptical, rueful, mournful and melting, and ardent for love.
Four decades have passed since Coughlan went into the studio to record her debut album, Tired and Emotional. Since then, she has produced grown-up, uncompromising, wholly personal yet utterly universal music on either side of the Atlantic about what goes on between men and women.
Tickets €32.50 from www.roisindubh.net
