KATE ST JOHN


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Welcome to the official website of Kate St John. Kate has played in Van Morrison's band for many years, been a member of The Dream Academy and formed one third of The Ravishing Beauties. Kate has also played many sessions as a oboe/cor anglais/sax specialist, and has played live with various people including Jools Holland's Rhythm And Blues Orchestra. Details of Kate's solo albums Second Sight and Indescribable Night, and of her recordings with Channel Light Vessel and Roger Eno can be found on the Discography page. In 1999 Kate played with violinist Nigel Kennedy on live shows and the recordings for his Jimi Hendrix project and was MD at the Barbican's Nick Drake tribute concert. She was recently chosen by Tom Waits to join the eclectic ensemble performing Tom Waits' music in his play The Black Rider with performances at London's Barbican in May 2004, San Francisco in August/September and Sydney in January 2005.

Kate will be playing oboe and Cor anglais in the ensemble for Philip Glass's new work The Book of Longing which features settings of Leonard Cohen's poems for singers and small instrumental ensemble. The world premier is in Toronto at the Luminata festival June 1-3 2007 and will also be performed in Charleston's Spoleto festival June 6-8, Chicago's Ravinia festival June 12-13 and the Lincoln Center festival July 14-15 2007. European dates are scheduled for October 2007. For further information go to www.pomegranatearts.com
Kate is currently doing workshops with Damon Albarn of the band Gorillaz for Monkey Journeys To The West, a large scale Western/Chinese opera to be premiered later this year.
In October 2006 Kate was one of the artists in the band for Came So Far For Beauty in Dublin playing with, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Jarvis Cocker, Beth Orton and others.
In spring 2006 Kate put together and played in the band for the London sessions of Hal Wilner's Sea Shanty album Rogues Gallery, working with amongst others Nick Cave and Bryan Ferry.
Kate was Musical Director of the recent sell out Daughters Of Albion show at London's The Barbican, part of their Folk Britannia series. The concert, which received glowing reviews, featured Norma Waterson, Eliza Carthy, June Tabor, Kathryn Williams, Lou Rhodes and Sheila Chandra backed by a 9 piece band playing Kate's arrangements of traditional and new folk/crossover songs. It was shown on BBC 4 in March 2006. Read reviews>>
Kate was part of the band for Tom Waits' The Black Rider showing at the Los Angeles Ahmanson Theatre, end of April to mid-June 2006. She has also performed in London, San Francisco and Sydney as part of the band.
On April 24th 2004 Kate performed as a guest artist and arranger at Hal Wilner's "Perfect Partners" tribute to Nino Rota at London's Barbican as part of their Only Connect series of concerts. Read reviews>>
For both 2002 and 2003 Kate was selected as one of 12 judges for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize and appeared on national TV discussing her views on the nominees.