It genuinely mystifies me why Christine Collister isn’t a household name. Even though she has operated outside of the more commercial genres throughout her career, she really should be more acclaimed. Maybe that’s unfair, as her peerless voice has always been recognised by critics and other artists, but somehow that has never translated to broad appeal. Frankly, it’s the wider world’s loss.

Yesterday, Sunday 28th September was the second anniversary of the publication of Dead Man Singing. Christine Collister doesn’t appear directly in the book (although her former musical partner Clive Gregson has a small cameo if you know where to look) but her music was very much part of my soundtrack during 1990, when the book takes place. It also made the fact that I marked that anniversary last night by seeing her in concert all the more appropriate.

I first saw Christine Collister, then part of the Richard Thompson Band, in 1986 (at the same gig where I first encountered Danny Thompson, as I wrote about last week), and the intervening 39 years have done nothing to dampen my love of her voice, as I've written about before. She’s an extraordinary singer, with a deep rich tone capable of soaring into flight at a moment’s notice, yet none of her (highly impressive) technical ability is ever at the expense of the song. She isn’t about vocal tricks and showing off, she’s about connecting: with the music, with emotions, with the audience. I’ve seen her several times since then, at venues as diverse as Queen Elizabeth Halls and the Bloomsbury Theatre in London, Swindon’s Wyvern Theatre, The Royal Albert Hall, and – last night – Hangar Farm Arts Centre in Totton.

A large part of the set was made up with tracks from her most recent album, last year’s Children of the Sea. It’s an album of songs inspired by the folklore of Collister’s native Isle of Mann, and those were performed with backing tracks from the album as a bed for her live vocals. Usually, I’m not a big fan of backing tracks in a live environment, but in this case it worked well. Dear Sister, a duet with her former Daphne’s Flight band-mate Chris While (on video), was perhaps the highlight of the newer songs, particularly as Christine explained the mythological background to the song and the relevance it had to her own experience of caring for her mother through her final years. Here's a link to a performance of the song from another of her recent shows.

The rest of the set was performed live, with Christine accompanying herself on guitar. There were plenty of old favourites revisited – It's All Just Talk from her time with Clive Gregson was a highlight for me – as well as selected tracks from her solo albums and some well-chosen covers (Don MacLean’s Vincent, Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle). The big finale of the night was another cover, Elbow’s anthemic One Day Like This, with a surprise segue into… well, you’ll have to watch the video to find out what, but it worked wonderfully.

The older tracks were prefaced with anecdotes and accompanied with old photos and videos, a particular joy for long-serving fans like me. My favourite story was how she asked Richard Thompson to play on her first solo album, then admitted that she didn’t have a budget to pay him (a fact that he wasn’t in the least concerned about). Instead, on a whim when passing a shop, she bought him a kite and gave him that in lieu of a session fee (he was delighted with it, although Christine admitted that you can only get away with a move like that once).

I’ve loved Christine Collister’s voice all my adult life. I’ve seen her sing several times over the course of those 39 years and there’s no one I could even begin to compare her with. She sings with her whole soul, losing herself in the music and giving the impression that she’s tapping into something bigger than herself. It’s clear that she’s not only a talented, gifted singer, but also someone who feels her art deeply and loves to share it with an audience. It was a joy to be part of that audience again last night. Thanks for the years, Christine. Hopefully it won’t be too long before I can see you do it all again.