Megan Watterson

The second album from Oxfordshire-based singer-songwriter Megan Henwood is going to cause problems for anyone who likes their new music to fit into neat little boxes. Henwood has worked on the album with her brother, Joe, with whom she won the BBC's Young Folk Award in 2009, but while Head, Heart, Hand taps in to various long-standing musical traditions, it's not a record you can simply label as "folk". The painstakingly crafted songs recall soul, blues and pop styles, while the careful and precise production is the result of the Henwoods' collaboration with producer Tom Excell, whose background is in electronic music.

“This song is about coming to terms with the end of a relationship and moving on, or rather working through the process of moving on,” she explains of “All the Same,” which you can listen to below. “Often in the ending of romantic connections, we go around in our heads and try to make perfect sense of what happened, to decide who was at fault, to wonder if we should have known better or whether making even just a few different choices might have changed the outcome.

There's no question that the 18th century was entirely focused on the vocal achievements of the great singing stars, both male and female - on both sopranos like Bordoni and Cuzzoni and on castrati like Farinelli and Carestini.

There's no question that the 18th century was entirely focused on the vocal achievements of the great singing stars, both male and female - on both sopranos like Bordoni and Cuzzoni and on castrati like Farinelli and Carestini. They were equivalent to our superstars of today: alter egos of "their" composers, with whom they had fostered a virtually symbiotic relationship. In addition to these singers' technical virtuosity-there's a reason that Baroque arias are among the most difficult in the operatic repertoire-these sometimes almost mythical figures fascinated audiences with their beauty of tone and legato lines.

Megan Birdsall has began a featured songstress in the Kansas City Jazz community since she broke onto the scene fronting her own jazz trio called Birdsong while also singing lead for Kansas City’s power house blues band The Nortons. Soon she was headlining the best clubs in town: Jardine’s Jazz Club, The Phoenix, The Blue Room, Plaza III, and 12 Baltimore. Megan was then asked to be the featured act at the re-opening of the historic Drum Room in the Hotel President.