Sheila Chandra’s Echo released today

A shy and infrequent live performer in her time, and very much aware that so many of her fans were disappointed never to have seen her in concert, Chandra has put together this collection of recordings to give them a taste of what her breathtaking virtuoso solo voice performances were like.

‘Echo’ is a set drawn from an extensive search for every concert, TV or radio session recording that Chandra ever made. From these she has picked the finest performances of her songs, drawn largely from the first two albums of her 90s solo-voice-and-drone trilogy, which was reissued on vinyl on its 30^th anniversary, in 2023. Other additions include two songs from her fifth solo album ‘Roots and Wings’ where she was refining the techniques she would later come to use on ‘Weaving My Ancestors’ Voices’, and ‘The Zen Kiss’ – and a final track drawn from her appearances during the first ‘Imagined Village’ tour in 2007.

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“My performances were co-created, by my audience and myself,” says Chandra. “It’s a performer’s presence and heart that an audience come to hear, not technical perfection. Concerts are one of the few places where another person gives us their undivided, undistracted and ‘in the moment’ presence, and we, as audience, ‘borrow’ their stilled mind. It’s one of the vanishingly few spaces in our society where that still happens.

The performances embodied on this album, reflect that truth. They are not perfect. And sustaining 100% focused concentration when you’re carrying an entire show alone is impossible. In some cases, I had access to performances of the same song with greater technical perfection, but less ‘soul’. In every case, I have chosen feeling over precision – even, in some cases, chosen ‘soul’ over the best available recording quality.

That said, listening to an album is not the same as being at a live performance but I’ve tried to ignore the impulse to ‘change history’.”