Music legend Joan Armatrading arrived in Birmingham aged just seven from St Kitts. Decades later, the multi-award-winning pop, rock and blues singer-songwriter has turned classical to create a wonderful new work for the City of Birmingham Orchestra and Choir
Joan Armatrading describes her new classical work Homeland as “a love letter to Birmingham”. It’s a love than goes back more than 60 years for one of Britain’s greatest singer-songwriters, who arrived in the city from St Kitts as a seven-year-old.
“The lyrics talk about Birmingham. I’m an artist and I’ve travelled the world, but it’s great to have a home land such as Birmingham, hence the name Homeland,” says Joan. “Birmingham is open, warm and friendly and if you walk past someone you’ve never met and say hello, they’ll say hello back. It’s a fantastic place.”
Homeland is Joan’s new work for choir and orchestra premiered by the City of Birmingham Orchestra and Chorus (CBSO) at Symphony Hall on 7 December as part of the festive
Bringing the Light concert. The work is Joan’s second-ever classical piece following her first foray, Symphony No.1, which debuted at London’s Southbank Centre in 2023 to great acclaim.
RESILIENCE AND WARMTH
Joan said: “The guys at the CBSO came to the concert which I didn’t know. They obviously liked it because they asked me to write for them! Homeland is a piece that highlights the city of Birmingham and its people, reflecting the strong sense of community, resilience and warmth. It is a love letter to a place to which I am bonded and one I hold with affection and pride. Through both words and music, the piece weaves together the sounds, energy and rhythms of the city while reaching out into its vast surrounding countryside. This is Birmingham not simply as a backdrop, but as a living, breathing presence – an often-underrated landscape where industry and nature exist side by side in quiet beauty.”
Homeland is a choral piece with 100-piece choir, so “lots of voices” says Joan. At the time we spoke with her she hadn’t heard it with the full orchestra and choir but was due to at the first rehearsals and admitted she was feeling “very excited” at the prospect.
LOVE AND AFFECTION
Joan is best known for her hit song Love and Affection and as a multi-Grammy Award and BRIT Award nominee and Ivor Novello Award winner. After arriving in Brum as a child, Joan taught herself to play piano and guitar before becoming Britain’s first female singer songwriter to gain international success. Her songs have won her many admirers, from Bob Dylan to Arlo Parks. She is the first UK female artist to debut at number 1 in Billboard’s Blues charts and the first female UK artist to be nominated for a Grammy in the Blues category. She was awarded an MBE in 2001 and a CBE in 2020 and is a long-time supporter and trustee of the Princes’ Trust charity, mentoring young people.
Joan says of Brum: “After arriving at seven, I watched it change when I was old enough to be aware of it changing. It was actually a bit boring and industrial and nothing really exciting was going on. But it’s been opened up, you can walk around it without cars and the culture and creativity now is massive.”
EXPLORING STYLES
Speaking of her focus on classical music, Joan says that over the years she has explored many musical styles. For decades she has been writing, arranging, producing, engineering and playing all the instruments in her albums. She views that adventurous trait as one of the secrets to her popularity and longevity. “The people who were with me in 1972 won’t necessarily be with me now, so you have to bring on new people,” she says. “It’s nice to know I’ve touched people and allowed them to express themselves. Once after an interview, the interviewer said to me that he was inspired to go and propose to his girlfriend! There are babies named after songs, so lots of Willows and Rosies!”
Joan has been self-sufficient in career terms, which has meant that even during difficult periods like Covid she carried on doing what she does. She’s always been interested in technology, so we asked for her view on one of the hot topics of the day – AI and its impact on creativity. She said: “People get worried AI will take over everything. We should use it like we use other things. Remember you are a human. It’s fine to start the process with AI but not finish the process. You can’t prompt it to write a song for you.” Joan remembers when she first got a synthesiser and a friend asked ‘why have you got that Joan?’ “The inference was it might diminish the craft or was cheating somehow which obviously it wasn’t,” she says.
SECOND SYMPHONY
One of Joan’s proudest moments was graduating with BA Hons in History through the Open University. She studied on tour and while e-mail was available, you weren’t allowed to submit essays by e-mail – so she had to post work back from places like Australia and hope they made it. The last day of Joan’s tour was the last exam, so she hopped off a plane, got straight into a car and did the exam.
Joan is currently working on her second symphony. She says she always knew she wanted to write classical at some point. “One day I just started writing it – I hadn’t planned to that day, but it just happened. It’s not a million miles from pop. The big difference is I can’t sing what I’ve written. Classical is sung in longer vowels which pop people don’t do.”