Kate St. John
Kate St. John is a classically trained composer, arranger, producer and instrumentalist (oboe, cor anglais, accordion, saxophone and piano). Her first band was The Ravishing Beauties with Virginia Astley and Nicky Holland. The trio joined The Teardrop Explodes in Liverpool during the winter of 1981 for a series of dates at a small clubs and a UK tour in early 1982. During the 1980's and early 1990s she was a member of The Dream Academy with Nick Laird-Clowes. In 1985 they had a worldwide hit with "Life In A Northern Town" and produced three albums: The Dream Academy (1985), Remembrance Days (1987) and A Different Kind Of Weather (1990). In the 1990s Kate was a member of Van Morrison's live band, playing oboe and saxophone. She played on five Van Morrison albums. In 1994 she co wrote and sang on four tracks with Roger Eno on the album The Familiar on the All Saints Label. This led to the formation of Channel Light Vessel, a band with Kate, Roger Eno, Bill Nelson, Laraaji and Mayumi Tachibana.
Kate has released two solo albums: Indescribable Night (1995) and Second Sight (1997).
She has played and toured with many artists including XTC, Julian Cope, The Waterboys, Damon Albarn, Marianne Faithfull and Lou Reed.
In the last 10 years she has specialized in being a Musical Director for multi-artist shows, including working with Joe Boyd on the Way To Blue tributes to Nick Drake, Hal Wilner on his Rogues Gallery and Nino Rota concerts and the Imagining Ireland/Imagining Home concerts in 2016 at The National Concert Hall in Dublin and The Festival Hall. She is also a string and woodwind arranger and recently orchestrated 9 songs with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for Laura Marling
Kate, with her husband and writing partner, Neill MacColl, specializes in On Set music production in films, having worked on Far From The Madding Crowd (2015), Tulip Fever (2017), My Cousin Rachel (2017) and The Little Stranger (2018).
Curious Music released Kate's 1997 solo album Second Sight as a limited edition double 180g clear vinyl package and FLAC DL on December 12, 2017.
