Free At Noon Flashback: Jonatha Brooke immerses us in her world through beautiful storytelling

Jonatha Brooke | Photo by Rocco Peditto | roccopeditto.com

Folk singer-songwriter Jonatha Brooke played downstairs at World Cafe Live for this week’s Free At Noon concert and took the crowd on an emotional journey with her magnificent musical stories.

Brooke explained that she would be playing music from her recent one-woman play My Mother Has Four Noses, a reflection on her relationship with her recently passed mother who she became caretaker of after she became ill with Alzheimer’s. Without missing a beat, she faced the heaviness of the topic head-on with light-hearted quips, explaining that sometimes when you’re in times of pain, you can step back and see the humor in the situations that life places you in. Before playing her special song “Time”, playing solely on a small mbira, Brooke explained that this song represented a pivotal moment in her life: when she realized she wasn’t ready to lose her mother yet. As the song came to it’s close and she quickly swiped away a tear from her eye, it was clear that there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. Today’s performance showcased Jonatha’s immense power of connection through her music, which she joked is “a lot cheaper than a shrink.”

Couldn’t make it out to today’s Free At Noon? Check out the photo gallery and listen back in our archives of today’s performance below. Brooke’s one-woman show will be in Cleveland next week but will grace us later this summer with a series of performances in Malvern in mid-June. Find more information on My Mother Has Four Noses here.

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Setlist
Are You Getting This Down
My Misery
Scars
Time
Angel In The House
Blood From A Stone
So Much Mine
Slight Of Hand