How choir rocked my world

Three women share their stories of festive singing

Sitting in an American diner in Derbyshire seven years ago, Caroline Thompson had a brainwave. The mum of two had recently retrained as an NHS Talking Therapist, and while she loved her new role, she

In 1976, the revolutionary singer-songwriter LAURA NYRO returned from self-imposed exile. But her comeback confounded expectations, shifting away from the impassioned intimacies of her early albums to embrace more radical perspectives. Fifty years on, Nyro’s collaborators revisit her striking second act. “She was a hip American from the Bronx,” one friend and producer tells Rob Hughes. “But her soul was old.”

We owe much to the Victorian figures determined to resurrect the joy of Christmas through music. Andrew Green charts how carol collectors have shaped the way the world celebrates

I was at one of those gatherings where friends of friends sprawled into groups entirely unconnected from the first, like a suburban town long freed from its planner. “It must be great to be in enterta

London Shepherd’s Bush Empire