Ian Shaw and Sarah Jane Morris

Sunday 26th February, Tickets £15, Doors 7pm, Performance 8.30pm (2 sets, approx finish 11pm)

Ian Shaw and Sarah Jane Morris revisit your favourite live jazz club Hideaway

BBC Award winning vocalist Shaw teams up with powerhouse ex-Communards vocalist Morris in a show celebrating contemporary songwriters including Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Nick Cave and Tracy Chapman. This inspired vocal pairing has been selling out festivals this year and is simply not to be missed.

Ian Shaw - vocals and piano

Sarah Jane Morris - vocals

Ian Shaw

Best Jazz Vocalist at the BBC Jazz Awards in 2007 and 2004, Ian Shaw has already amassed a number of highly acclaimed albums and is a popular performer both in the UK and the US. An incredibly colourful character, he has been cited, along with Mark Murphy and Kurt Elling, as one of the world's finest male jazz vocalists.

His acclaimed 2006 album Drawn to All Things - the songs of Joni Mitchell saw him "Praised far and wide as the single greatest male jazz vocalist Britain has to offer" by Jazz Times. This was followed in 2008 by the autobiographical collection co-penned with guitarist and composer David Preston, Lifejacket, also on Linn Records. In the summer of 2009 Shaw recorded his long-awaited solo album, Somewhere Towards Love (Splash Point Records), released in early October.

Shaw’s career in performance began unusually for a jazz musician on the Alternative Cabaret Circuit, alongside such performers as Julian Clary, Rory Bremner and Jo Brand. Shaw was spotted by Dave Illic, jazz critic for City Limits and was described as “the voice of the decade”.

During the next few years Shaw moved from the singer-pianist format to working with his new band to an eventual move into jazz. Shaw has toured extensively in the UK - regular venues include the Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Blackheath Concert Halls, Ronnie Scott's, The Vortex, the Jazz Café and The Barbican. Ian has played at all of the major jazz festivals in the UK including Cork, Brecon, Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh (where he was nominated for a Perrier Award), Grimsby, Glasgow, Cheltenham, Scarborough, Swanage and St. Ives.

In Europe he has proved popular in France, Germany and Italy with numerous live appearances. He has also performed regularly in the States including Jazz at the Lincoln Center (New York), Cine Grill (Hollywood), the Fairmont (Chicago), The Nest i(Washington DC), Fez Club (New York), the Ellington Church (New York), the Pasadena Auditorium (California), the Miami Film and Music Festival and the Arizona Jazz Party. He has also performed at the Hanoi Opera House and Ho Chi Minh City Opera in Vietnam.

His appearances on TV include guest slots with Jools Holland, Top of the Pops, The Jack Dee Show, Christmas Night with the Stars (BBC), C4’s The Happening, TVAM, BBC Breakfast Show, BBC 2’s A Night of Love, BBC 2’s Jazz at the 606 and, more recently, numerous appearances on the Performance and Artsworld channels.

Collaborators over the years have been many and include Quincy Jones, Abudullah Ibrahim, Guy Barker, Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor, Iain Ballamy, Mornington Lockett, Barb Jungr, Cleo Laine, John Dankworth, Cedar Walton, Joe Lovano and Joe Beck. Shaw’s ongoing and highly popular collaboration is a celebrated duet show with Claire Martin, the UK's finest female jazz singer - he guested on her 2002 album Too Darn Hot! (Linn AKD 243). Together they have toured the world in an intimate duo setting with Shaw playing piano and with the BBC Big Band. They co-hosted the 2004 BBC Jazz Awards. He recently presented Big Band Special on BBC Radio 2 which features the BBC Big Band.

Shaw is a regular on BBC Radio 2, 3 and 4 and his album Lifejacket cemented his reputation as a fine song-writer as well as a great jazz singer.

Sarah Jane Morris

"Leave your preconceptions at home," begins one London critic's assessment of sensual singer-songwriter Sarah Jane Morris, who straddles rock, blues, jazz and soul with a goosebump-raising four octave range that rumbles from the heels of her size eight shoes to the tips of her flame-red mane.

Famed for her association with The Communards in the mid-80s and infamous for a banned rendition of the classic 'Me and Mrs Jones', Sarah Jane Morris has always attracted as much attention for her politics as for her soul-driven, seismic voice. Nine solo albums later, pop stardom on the continent, and a diverse set of musical collaborations on record, film and stage, Morris continues to steer her unorthodox career to greater heights.

Sarah Jane celebrated her 25-year career with the release of a double-CD, After All These Years. This 34-track compilation, which went Top 40 in Europe, includes acoustic sessions, dance remixes and live performances that showcase the true spirit and energy of this charismatic, uncompromising performer. The CD traces Sarah Jane's career from her early days with political bands The Republic and The Happy End, to chart success, solo singles and unreleased live tracks, and contains a new bossa nova version of her cult hit 'Me and Mrs Jones'. To celebrate her hit with The Communards, Sarah Jane released a new rendition of 'Don't Leave Me This Way' at the end of 2006, twenty years after it hit No.1 in Britain and became the best selling single of the year. Since 2008, Sarah Jane has continued to record and release CDs, collaborating with Marc Ribot (Tom Waits), Dominic Miller, Enrico Melozzi and Boy George.

Some hear Sarah Vaughan or Billie Holliday in her voice, others cite Macy Gray and Erykah Badu, although Morris herself likes to say: 'Nina Simone meets Janis Joplin.' Yes, always her own woman, Sarah Jane Morris is a truly independent spirit who has been making exciting music for twenty-five years.

"When that throaty, extraordinarily-deep voice comes booming out of that pale, auburn-haired face, it's a bit like the possession scene from The Exorcist." Evening Standard

"A voice that can excite shivers of passion and delight... Soaring, swooping, sensual and sophisticated, this voice is more than a style, it's a force of nature... Torch song, soul standard or smoky blues, the message remains constant: human passion with a dazzling voice." Neil Spencer, The Observer