Twenty years after a debut that went straight to number one, Corinne Bailey Rae performs the album in full at the Royal Albert Hall, with Laura Mvula as her guest.
Corinne Bailey Rae performs her number-one debut album in full at the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington on Tuesday 27 October 2026, twenty years after its release. Laura Mvula joins her as guest.
Born in Leeds in 1979 to a father from Saint Kitts and Nevis and an English mother, she studied classical violin. She fronted an indie band, Helen, while reading English at Leeds.
Her self-titled debut arrived in February 2006, making her the fourth British female act whose first album entered at number one. “Put Your Records On” and “Like a Star” took it to more than four million copies.
After the death of her husband, the musician Jason Rae, in 2008, she made The Sea, shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2010. She has since won two Grammy Awards, one of them Album of the Year for Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters. Black Rainbows earned a second Mercury nomination in 2023.
At the Hall the debut plays in sequence, then songs from The Sea, The Heart Speaks in Whispers and Black Rainbows.
Laura Mvula is the Birmingham composer whose debut, Sing to the Moon, was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2013.