Nine Songs: Keeley Forsyth

In the 25 years since Björk’s historic Vespertine show at London’s Royal Opera House, the Covent Garden institution has become gradually more open to contemporary artists performing their own work on its stages. Elton John, Pet Shop Boys, and Rufus Wainwright have all graced the spectacular main theatre, white and gold with crimson seats and a deep blue oculus that mimics the night sky. Below ground meanwhile, in the ROH’s Linbury Theatre, things have been allowed to get a bit more edgy and odd, like a laboratory of sorts. John Grant, Caroline Polacheck, Matthew Herbert, and the late Scott Walker have been involved in various commissions at the Linbury, plus, more recently, ESKA made a splash with her binaural opera Woman & Machine. This autumn, associate director Netia Jones is bringing a whole new series of research and development events to the Linbury, called Dark Nights, with the idea of creating one-off performances by vocal artists and composers at the vanguard of experimentation – kicking off on September 23 with Keeley Forsyth who has, over the course of three albums and a handful of EPs, carved out an impressive niche as one of the UK’s most distinctive voices, spine-...