Utopia

FEATURING: 

IONNALEE: IAMAMIWHOAMI 

FATOUMATA DIAWARA 

LE GATEAU CHOCOLAT 

TALIA RANDALL 

PLUS DJS 

Curated by Charlotte Church, Utopia brings together a contrasting line-up of voices from world music, cabaret, electronica, synth-pop and folk, all snuggled together as comfortable bedfellows. 

ionnalee is the new solo project of audiovisual electronic pop phenomenon iamamiwhoami’s creator Jonna Lee. She explores themes of mortality and legacy building in her striking album and film EVERYONE AFRAID TO BE FORGOTTEN. 

Fatoumata Diawara is a poet-chanteuse, huskily perfect-pitch. Diawara grew up hearing Wassoulou music, a style thought to be one of the main ancestors of blues. Her album coproduced by Mathieu Chedid (-M-) fuses traditional and modern African sounds. 

The opera-occasional, lycra-loving, black-beard, drag-diva Le Gateau Chocolat brings RAW CACAO to Wales Millennium Centre as part of Festival of Voice. A cabaret legend, performing on major stages all over the world from Adelaide to Edinburgh, and Wroclaw to Sydney. This specially curated cycle of songs is the six-inch heeled, six and half foot tall, wig-clad wonder in equal parts, everything you expect and as you may never have seen before; intimate, incomparable, inspired, raw.  La Gateau Chocolat does disco, opera, musicals and pop from one end of the spectrum, swinging wildly to the other, barely pausing for breath from his bewitching baritone.

Award-winning Talia Randall is funny, political and moving. A dyslexic raised in a house where puns, witticisms and double entendre were art forms of the highest rank, Talia developed her voice at the revered Roundhouse Poetry Collective.