Katy Carr’s sixth studio album “Providence” from October 30th

Katy Carr’s sixth studio album Providence was inspired initially by a dream sequence that the award-winning singer songwriter remembers upon waking. Themes around water – including songs about taking in Hampstead’s Ladies’ Pond and miracles on the River Vistula – good versus evil, fighting for freedom as well as love and death are explored. The new album creates the third and final chapter in her Polish roots rediscovery trilogy initiated by her fourth album, ‘Paszport’ (2012).

Katy Carr

Katy believes that the people she has met along the way have been linked through providence and that her experiences have been synchronised through fate. Picture yourself through the new album’s release, transported back to Hampstead post World War II sometime around 1947, where you are hosting a party at Erno Goldfinger’s house for the elite thinkers, writers, military leaders of Britain and Poland throughout the ages. The Cold War has begun and Stalin has sealed his Iron Curtain stamp on Europe.

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Then you hear Edgar Rice Burroughs’ voice repeating over and over again – “Am I alive and a reality, or am I but a dream?” A young George Orwell then discusses in great detail the current tragedy of ‘HERO TO ZEЯO’ and the ‘Western Betrayal of Poland’ with a Nobel Peace Prize laureate (Czesław Miłosz) and Polish resistance fighter (Witold Pilecki). For nearly a decade, Carr has been making in-roads to rediscover the land of her mother’s birth, Poland – learning the Polish language and history of a rich and diverse heritage.

Underlying this Polish mission has been her personal quest to understand her own family’s inter-generational trauma from both a British and Polish WWII experience. This has resulted in family estrangement and led her to develop a songwriting and performance career. The ten songs on the album reflect the immense need the singer had for strong role model characters that could become her friends and family and demonstrate survival techniques through their own life histories, trials and experiences.

Nottingham-born Carr says she learnt that at the heart of every story was a quest for inner enlightenment, freedom and peace. With the album’s other tracks, ‘BOADICEA’ praises Queen Elizabeth I, aka ‘THE VIRGIN QUEENE’ on her defeat of the Spanish Armada and then they all then head off to ‘THE LADIES’ POND’ for a swim. ‘AFTERWARDS’ … and you see a little girl born into poverty in the Polish mountains who will eventually become your mother. ‘THAT LITTLE DEVIL’ , that is your grandfather, suffers from Auschwitz syndrome and inflicts immeasurable cruelty upon his family. Queen Wanda of Poland then tells you to keep the 'MIRACLE ON THE VISTULA’, a secret in a box under the water and never to utter a word. You hear ‘A BEAUTIFUL SONG FOR YOU’ sung by Oscar Wilde’s brave nightingale, whose song – once so strong – has now faded into the distance as her heart is pierced by a thorn and loses its precious life force.

As you awaken with the dawn, a bloom of a red rose reminds you that this strange and yet compelling dream/nightmare sequence is continuing to spiral. Your head is awash with coded messages from the ‘HEJ SOKOŁY’ peregrine falcons. Subsequently you dash for your notebook and scribble down as much as you can remember. There must be a meaning to all of this, you say to yourself. Your senses are heightened, for you know the muse has spoken. Now your only job is to decipher her messages and translate them into a ‘FREEDOM SONG’.

Katy Carr is an award-winning British recording artist who has released six albums to date. Her recent albums ‘Paszport’ (2012) and ‘Polonia’ (2015) are inspired by the Polish WWII experience. In 2016 Katy was awarded the ‘Pro Patria’ medal for her humanitarian and musical work. She is also an Ambassador of Polish history in Great Britain. Amongst literary and other works that inspired this latest album were George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' and 'England Your England', Oscar Wilde's 'The Nightingale and the Rose' as well as Witold Pilecki's first comprehensive intelligence report (1943) on the atrocities committed at Auschwitz.

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