5 – 10 March 2024

Line up: Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow, Bristol, Brighton

Few month after the release of her album, ‘Ghosts’, Polish musician and singer Hania Rani embarks on her UK tour to promote the album. ‘Ghosts’ received the prestigious Paszporty Polityki award for its impressive artistic development and aesthetics. The album has also been praised in many international media and press. British Guardian described it as full of Hushed vocals and compelling melodies and the American Forbes summarises it as a Mesmerizing suite of 13 tracks that take us on a musical and emotional journey.

Hania Rani who grew up in Gdansk, is probably still best known for Esja, its instrumental piano pieces swiftly and widely embraced during the pandemic for a palliative beauty which BBC Radio 4’s Mark Coles described as “sublime and minimalist”. (Her Covid era Live from Studio S2 performance video has now clocked up almost 6 million views.) Nonetheless, she has always embraced broad horizons, far broader than her strict, two-decade training as a pianist might initially suggest. She has also worked with other media, releasing a ‘highlights’ reel, Music for Film and Theatre, in 2021, and her scores include Piotr Domalewski’s I Never Cry, winner of the 2020 Polish Film Festival’s Best Score award, last year’s Venice – Infinitely Avantgarde and, coming later this year, Amazon’s The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart.

Rani’s album ‘Ghosts’ is the sound of an artist finding her own voice, finding new stories to tell and perhaps sharing her music as intended for the first time. It builds on her earlier successes ‘Esja’ and ‘Home’ with an expanded yet still minimal setup of piano, keyboards, synths and features more of her mysterious, bewitching voice. As the name suggests it’s sometimes eerie, even haunted, these qualities underlined by Icelandic arrangements. But its spirit is warm, beckoning one into an ambitious double album that unfolds at an exquisite pace, informed by revelatory, exploratory live performances like 2022’s livestream from Paris’ prestigious Les Invalides, which has earned 3.7 million views to date. The lyrics are, partially inspired by a two-month residency in a small studio in Switzerland’s mountains, where Rani was working on a soundtrack for a documentary about Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti.

‘The edge of life and death‘ – Rani summarises – ‘and what actually happens in between: this was what really interested me. Even singing the word death was quite a shock. It’s such a weird word to say out loud, and people are afraid of it, which I found extremely interesting. Most of the songs probably still talk about love and things like that, but ‘Ghosts’ is more me thinking about having to face some kind of end.’

Come to one of Rani’s concerts yourself, hear her music and decide if US Washington Post was right stating that Polish musician Hania Rani’s album is delicate. Her live show won’t be.

Buy your tickets HERE.