Editor-at-Large Peter Bacon looks forward to a new festival of the voice.

“Hang”- it’s what happens before an art exhibition, as the works are assembled and installed in the gallery. “Hang” – it’s what happens after the show, when the select few get together after hours. Those are the ways Georgia Mancio wants us to think of the word she has chosen for her Pizza Express Jazz Club takeover in October.

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Sure, this Hang is about the voice – Georgia is a singer, after all. But it’s also about the excitement of preparing a show, and the more relaxed feeling afterwards, the camaraderie that builds from working on a project together, and the relationships that develop between musicians – and then between the performers and their audience. It’s a celebration not only of individual human expression but of communal human endeavour.

Liane Carroll at the piano and Georgia Mancio at a past ReVoice! festival Photo credit: Dave Ohm

It’s three years now since the last ReVoice!, the annual international festival in which Georgia Mancio brought Gregory Porter, Carmen Lundy and Raul Midon to the attention of London listeners. Hang is a more intimate and personal affair, four days in which the award-winning singer works in a variety of different musical contexts, from a duo with old friend Ian Shaw to a “salud!” to Antonio Carlos Jobim, from an opening evening of two trios, to the grand finale called Mr & Mrs, when Mancio and Liane Carroll take to the stage with their lesser halves, drummer Dave Ohm and bassist Roger Carey.

Georgia Mancio’s Hang runs from 5 to 8 October, at Pizza Express Jazz Club. Booking is now open. 

LINK: Georgia Mancio’s Hang