Post Show: Joanna Newsom with special guest Roy Harper at Royal Festival Hall

Photography: Philip Ryalls

Over two unforgettable sold out nights at Royal Festival Hall Joanna Newsom kept the audience spellbound as she played material from 2010 triple-album Have One On Me as well as old favourites ‘Peach, Plum, Pear’ and ‘The Book of Right On’.

Support came from English folk legend Roy Harper personally coaxed to pick up his guitar once more after two years of retirement by Newsom.

Reviews

The lively arrangements have an exhilarating quality that still delivers a delicious shiver. – Holly Williams, The Independent

‘Good Intentions Paving Company’ ended on an almost funky note, with the trombonist bringing a Dixieland gloss to Newsom’s rollicking piano.
– Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, Financial Times

A standing ovation and an encore of the wistful Baby Birch completed an evening that, though magical, was most resolutely not away with the fairies.
– Will Hodgkinson, The Guardian

Roy Harper

Photo: Francesca Perry

Joanna Newsom

Photos: Minh Le

From the blogs

Roses are thrown; offers of marriage are shouted and met with a bashful rebuff. Emotional, exhilarating and truly exceptional, Newsom’s songcraft is indisputably one of a kind. – wears the trousers magazine

Solo opener ‘’81’ has always been the easiest of them to love, and tonight it’s almost unbearably delicate, Newsom’s folksy lilt shifting in and out of phase with glassy harp figures. – Rory Gibb, Drowned in Sound

Throughout, the audience maintain an awed silence, absorbing every subtlety in Newsom’s performance and respectful of the almost painfully honest insights contained in songs like ‘Occident’. – Lois Jeary, For Folk’s Sake