I hope she plays again soon - I'd love to hear more of her songs.
Charlotte Yates is a musician I had not heard play live for a very long time and it was a delight to hear her play songs from her recently released album Then the Stars Start Singing.
I remember her from late 1980s Wellington when she performed with a number of different line-ups including When the Cat's Been Spayed with Robin Nathan and Jackie Clarke.
She was always a good singer but her mature voice is fine and rich (a bit like my Merlot) and it sounded even better with beautiful backing vocals from accompanist Show Pony.
Show Pony (Emily Clemett) and Gil Eva Craig are two fabulous Wellington musicians and Yates' current collaborators.
They are both multi-instrumentalists and Craig is also a recording engineer with a studio in Wellington.
She plays a number of bass guitars (including a fretless one) as well as the tenor horn.
Show Pony plays violin as well as trumpet and my favourite song of the night was Hold Your Heart with both horn and trumpet in play.
Yates has written and recorded music for a number of New Zealand poets' work and it was wonderful to hear her perform James K Baxter's Flaming Shirt, Katherine Mansfield's The Awakening River and Hone Tuwhare's Mad.
There are probably not many musicians who could take poets' work and put them to music so effectively but then Yates' own lyrics are very poetic with lines like "my heart is double parked on a double yellow line" from her song Jennifer.
It turns out Charlotte Melser has been a fan of Yates' music since she was 10 when her dad took her along to a gig.
