Island Homecoming for Mull’s Aspiring Cabaret Diva

Fresh from a five-star run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Scotland’s aspiring diva Cat Loud takes her debut one-woman cabaret Big Night In on tour in February 2016, sharing the Big Night In Double Bill with award-winning musician and composer Finn Anderson who débuts music from his new EP

Uncharted Lands.

Big Night In sees Cat make the move from her childhood home on a Scottish island to the big city, seeking love, excitement and fame. When nothing goes according to plan, she wonders if maybe she should have just stayed at home. Cat Loud is the cabaret creation of Mull native Catriona MacLeod, a writer and singer currently based in Glasgow whose own uprooting from Mull to the mainland to study for a Masters degree in Theatre inspired her work. Big Night In, her debut solo show, charts the peaks and troughs of swapping an island lifestyle for an urban one, and features classic songs from her musical influences, ranging from icons Shirley Bassey, Nina Simone, Doris Day and Billie Holiday to the likes of Queen, Ms Dynamite and Adele thrown in for good measure.

Cat shares the bill with Fife native Finn Anderson, a self-taught pianist and accordionist who has spent the last two years composing for performance and film projects across the UK, picking up several award nominations including the Off West End and BroadwayWorld.com Awards for Best New Musical. Most recently, Finn wrote and directed Alba: A New Scottish Musical, which ran at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2014. The Double Bill tour sees him premiere his new EP Uncharted

Lands, released January 2016. This is his third release, the prolific musician released his first EP, Seeing Double, when he was just 14. Recorded in Newburgh with musicians David Ford, David Macfarlane and Ivan Sveda, Uncharted

Lands has been shaped by his love of storytelling and his penchant for the theatrical. Straddling jazz, folk and pop, Finn’s music and poetic lyrics have drawn comparisons with artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Joni Mitchell and Antony and the Johnsons.

No stranger to being on the road, Anderson has just completed a series of house concerts that have taken him around Scotland, England and Wales, but both MacLe- od and Anderson return to their respective hometowns of Tobermory and Newburgh before dates in St Andrews, Birmingham and London to name a few.

MacLeod’s childhood was spent performing at renowned venue An Tobar, and returning with her own work has been a long-held ambition. Anderson’s talents we similarly nurtured at The Steeple in Newburgh, as well as St Andrew’s The Byre Theatre, the town where MacLeod also completed her undergraduate degree, so the tour is something of a homecoming for both of them.

Cat Loud & Finn Anderson: The Big Night In Double Bill will be at An Tobar on Saturday February 13, 8.30pm, £10/£8 (Box Office: 01688 302211). For full tour dates, visit www.catloud. tumblr.com/dates