Northern Irish jazz vocalist Victoria Geelan’s experience of lost love led to the creation of her stunning and extraordinarily beautiful debut album which has just been released.
Her hauntingly romantic and deeply personal Unfit the Picture was recorded at a time when she was in the midst of a painful break-up.
Victoria said: “I had just split up with the love of my life so the emotions expressed in this album are real. My vocal on Jacques Brel’s Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don’t Leave Me) is pure and raw because I was really in that situation at the time.
“I have never heard an album that is just voice and harp but it creates a space for me to explore my vocal and emotional range. The material in the album is so diverse and it has really attracted people to it. There aren’t too many Northern Ireland singers playing around with different styles and languages.”
This superb new CD recorded with harpist Ursula Burns, has eight exquisitely crafted and arranged songs including four originals plus inventive and sympathetic covers of iconic songs from Prince, Jacques Brel and Portishead.
The collaboration with Ursula Burns came about after a chance meeting.
Victoria said: “I met Ursula at the birthday of a mutual friend in Belfast. She was playing the harp and I asked her could I do a song with her, I’m Feeling Good by Nina Simone. I asked her afterwards if she would be interested in recording with me. That was two and a half years ago and Unfit the Picture is the result.”
These eight smouldering and searingly honest songs of love and heartbreak are sung in English, French and Spanish and create a late night cabaret atmosphere reminiscent of the finest music cafés of Paris or Berlin.
Victoria is one of Northern Ireland’s best jazz singers, performing at the Derry Jazz Festival, as a guest vocalist with Linley Hamilton’s band and a regular performer at Derry’s new jazz club at Bennigan’s Bar. While Unfit the Picture is not strictly a jazz album it has an improvised feel, with Victoria’s vocals expressing deep feelings of love, anger, yearning and tenderness.
Right from the first song, the romantic 1940’s noirish Unlikely Valentine, written by Ursula Burns, the CD has an ethereal and otherworldly quality. The song with its lush orchestration and sweet, dreamlike melody could fit into a David Lynch film about damaged lives in small town America.
Canto written by Victoria Geelan is in Spanish and captures the dramatic, emotional intensity of the finest Flamenco or Portuguese Fado singers.
The haunting Mine Own Falls written by Victoria includes the lyrics ‘I love the skin I’m in’ and is a song all about resilience and battling against the odds. The first cover on the album is Prince’s Purple Rain and Victoria makes the song her own, every bit as much as Sinead O’Connor did with Nothing Compares to U. Her singing is spare and intensely personal as she bares her soul to the listener.
Track five transports the listener to the backstreets of Paris with Jacques Brel’s Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don’t Leave Me) a lyrical poem to lost love. Portishead’s ‘Glory Box’ has the poignant and passionate plea ‘Give me a reason to be a woman’.
The title track also written by Victoria has a Latin feel but is written in English and has her at her most passionately intense as she sings ‘We are hating, we are hating for you’. Ursula Burns responds with frenzied bow playing on the harp. The CD ends with her favourite lullaby, the evocative Connemara Cradle Song which her mother used to sing to her. With its simple, gorgeous melody and pure vocal, it is the perfect way to finish a wonderful work of art.
The album was produced with the aid of an Arts and Disability Awards Ireland grant, which enabled Victoria to buy state-of-the-art recording equipment to hone her craft. It took five long years for the album to come out from being awarded the grant in 2009 but she was determined that this labour of love would see the light of day.
To listen to excerpts from Victoria’s debut album go to http://victoriageelan.bandcamp.com/track/canto
Discover more from LoveBelfast
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
