There are few album launches where an artist’s life, location and music fold so neatly into one another, but Tina Carr’s unveiling of Moon Over Mildmay at the Mildmay Club felt like exactly that kind of convergence.
A wet Wednesday night in Islington, a crowded Victorian hall glowing with anticipation, and a singer who has - remarkably - only been making music for seven to eight years..
Carr spoke to the audience between songs, a narrative that gave her music context and cut straight to the marrow of her musical journey.
She spoke candidly of a former life entirely outside music, and of the restless, consuming period when she was transitioning into the one she lives now. Night after night, she would drive from West London to the North London venues she admired, playing music in the car, devouring new sounds, learning constantly.
“Listening was everything,” she said. “I was drenched in it - completely soaked in music. I didn’t know much then, and I still feel like I’m learning all the time.”
One tune in particular caught her repeatedly on those late-night drives: Coleman Hawkins’ haunting A Love Song from Apache. That melody lingered so deeply that it sparked her urge to write - not in imitation, but in response. “Without even realising,” she reflected, “I was falling back in love with music. And often, it was under a moon on those drives across the city.”
That confession reframed the entire night. Moon Over Mildmay wasn’t just a title - it was an autobiography.
The Mildmay Club’s ballroom was packed, including a healthy contingent who’d travelled down from the North of England - a testament to the grassroots support Carr has quietly cultivated. Long-time London listeners mingled with those discovering her for the first time, all drawn into the warm thrum of a venue whose history is inseparable from the city’s cultural undercurrent.
Tina’s return to this place for a live performance - and to the neighbourhood that nourished her musical life and period of rediscovery - carried a sense of homecoming. The rain might have obscured the moon on the way in, but its spirit hung over the evening and as the glitter ball spun slowly, its light dancing off every wall, it was itself, a worthy replacement on this cloudy winters evening.
Her eight piece band - a lineup listed modestly on the gig poster outside - played with the instinctive cohesion of a chamber ensemble rather than a pick-up group. They walked the audience through the new album over two sets.
The centre of gravity was Tina’s pianist and musical director, whose touch shaped the set’s architecture: spacious when needed, delicately propulsive elsewhere, always sensitive to Carr’s phrasing. His musical stewardship grounded the performance and gave the arrangements an understated confidence.
The rest of the ensemble - including violinist Àánú Sodipe, brass, strings, and rhythm section - worked with a rare attentiveness, sculpting each tune around Carr rather than leaning on volume or density.
The emotional apex was, inevitably, Moon Over Mildmay.
Carr delivered it with a kind of quiet authority - the sort that doesn’t announce itself, but settles over a room from the first bar. Her tone was warm, pure, and deceptively simple, allowing the song’s narrative to unfold without affectation. Sodipe’s violin floated across the arrangement with luminous clarity, drawing the audience into a collective hush. Stripped back to just piano, violin and vocal the song felt more personal and offered up a connectivity that was palpable.
The performance mirrored Tina’s own story: a moonlit crossing of London, the rediscovery of music, and the intimate link between geography and creativity.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Carr’s set is how fully formed she sounds despite her relatively short time in the craft. There’s no sense of rushing, no attempt to emulate or overreach. Instead, she offers something more unusual: a voice shaped by deep listening rather than early training, and a musical identity built from curiosity rather than careerism.
Her connection with the band - particularly her pianist/MD - suggests a developing artistic world with real longevity.
The Mildmay Club has hosted countless artists across its long and eccentric history, but Carr’s debut of Moon Over Mildmay felt distinctive: personal, place-rooted, and quietly ambitious.
If this is what she can craft after just seven or eight years inside the world of music, then the next chapter will be worth watching closely.
And judging by the crowd that braved the rain to hear her, many already are. Glenn Wright
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