Nina Kristofferson talks to Steve Pratt about the song which first attracted her to playing Billie Holiday and how this developed into a stage career

AS a child, Nina Kristofferson used to hear Billie Holiday singing on the radio. The song that stuck in her head was God Bless The Child and she used to sing-along with the track.

“Not to imitate her, but just to try and sing as well as her,” she says. “If you listen to an artist you really love, you want to sound as good as them. Whether you get there, who knows? Maybe I’m still trying.”

With her show, The Billie Holiday Story, she’s bringing the jazz singer to life by telling her story and singing the songs associated with her. It’s not a tribute show, but one in which she wants to capture the essence of a performer who’s considered to have one of the greatest jazz voices of all time.

“You want to encapsulate all the emotion she was delivering with each song. Each note, each word was weighted and had a flavour of its own.

That’s why whenever she sings, it’s never the same because she invests so much in each song.”

Kristofferson’s show isn’t a chronological telling of Holiday’s difficult life. “I do it all through her emotions, telling her story from when she was a child, what her experiences were and how it affected her. How she negotiated life to survive it,” she explains.

“The anecdotes about her life are like an emotional backdrop, so you get a really good insight into how she was feeling at that time and was affected by the experiences she went through.” Every performance is different as Kristofferson goes on an emotional journey like her subject and because the backing musicians play differently every night that has an effect on her as well.

“We listen to each other because they’re superb, world-class jazz musicians so it’s jazz at its purest.

Although it’s a one-woman show, those guys are very much my counterpoint on stage.

They help me tell the story.”

She was asked to sing Holiday songs while working in the US, having first performed her work at drama school. “I performed Strange Fruit and it had a strong effect on me because everyone loved it. The reaction was really phenomenal.

“That was a learning curve because I worked with some of the best musicians at that time and learnt a lot. Now here’s the thing, if you’ve got good jazz musicians they teach you how to bend the notes and really flavour it. It’s a bit like how Billie learnt her trade with the best jazz musicians.

“So I knew that I could play around with her voice, her style, her flavour. Then I just enjoyed her. I use some of her sounds so people can hear that it’s her and can identify her, but I don’t sing every note exactly like her.

“It’s putting your heart and soul into it. Each time you sing it’s fresh, organic, raw. It enables the audience to sit back and enjoy the story. I really just invite everyone to come on a journey with me and so far they have done.”

She first performed the show at the Edinburgh Festival in 2011, but needed to trim it to 50 minutes for the time slot. Now songs and story have been reinstated for the theatre tour.

“She has a meltdown basically. She’s dying, you could say, and in those last stages is baring her all and sharing herself – the good, the bad and the ugly. There are moments when she’s happy and moments when she’s torn to pieces because of the drama of her life.”

It’s a show she can put down for a while to work on other television, film and theatre projects.

She calls herself both an actress and a singer. She trained in both disciplines. “I’ve always sung the jazz and blues and I don’t find it difficult to bend my voice to it. I’ve grown up with that music. It stays with you, it forms a backdrop,” says Kristofferson who appeared in the region as Medea in a Northern Broadsides production of the Greek tragedy.

HE’S already thinking about a new project focused on the life and music of Nina Simone. “That’s another passion of mine – she was a phenomenal performer,”

she says.

“A lot of performers have got a story behind them. Holiday is a mixture of heavy drama, rape, abuse, drugs, literally everything you can throw at one person.”

Nowadays the industry is very different, especially how people are discovered. They can gain entry through a reality show rather than learning their trade and working their way up.

“One reason I’m attracted to people like Billie Holiday is because they were artists. They knew the trade, they worked at it, they grafted and some of them would do three shows a day. They paid their dues and deserved all the acclaim they got,” she says.

“With Nina Simone, when I hear her music it affects me personally, like Billie Holiday does.

“Billie Holiday was a phenomenal woman and that’s one of the reasons why I want to give her a voice. She has a voice, of course, but I wanted to introduce her back to the audience and not just give her a tribute act. I’m sure loads of people do that but she deserves more than that.”

  • Nina Kristofferson’s The Billie Holiday Story: York Grand Opera House, April 17. Box Office 0844-8713024 and atgtickets.com/york