Corinne Bailey Rae Announces New Project ‘Black Rainbows’

Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae has new music on the way. 

The “Put Your Records On” singer has unveiled a new song titled “New York Transit Queen.” The track serves as the lead single to her forthcoming project Black Rainbows. The collection will be available on September 15. 

Black Rainbows is inspired by the objects and artworks collected by Theaster Gates at the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago, according to a press release. 

“I knew when I walked through those doors that my life had changed forever,” Bailey Rae said in a release. “Engaging with these archives and encountering Theaster Gates and his practice has changed how I think about myself as an artist and what the possibilities of my work can be. This music has come through seeing. Seeing has been like hearing, for me. While I was looking, songs/sounds appeared.”

The singer’s new project is described as “a bold move from her previous work.” Black Rainbows “explores Black femininity, Spell Work, Inner Space/Outer Space, time collapse, ancestors and music as a vessel for transcendence,” the release continued.

In support of Black Rainbows, Bailey Rae will embark on a U.S. tour this fall. The trek will include stops at Yale University’s Schwarzman Center, New York’s National Jazz Museum in Harlem, University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, and Nashville’s CMA Theater.

A teaser to the video for “New York Transit Queen” and a full list of U.S. tour dates is below.

Corinne Bailey Rae Tour Dates:

September 5—Long Island, NY—Staller Center for the Arts at Stony Brook University
September 6—Washington, DC—Lincoln Theatre
September 8—Philadelphia, PA—Theatre of Living Arts
September 9—New Haven, CT—Schwarzman Center at Yale University
September 10—New York, NY—The National Jazz Museum in Harlem
September 12—Cincinnati, OH—Memorial Hall
September 14—Chicago, IL—Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at University of Chicago
September 17—Nashville, TN—CMA Theater
September 19—Charleston, SC—Charleston Music Hall
September 20—Durham, NC—Carolina Theatre
September 22—Sugar Hill, GA—The Eagle Theatre at Sugar Hill
September 24—Birmingham, AL—Alys Stephens Center at University of Alabama
September 26—New Orleans, LA—Orpheum Theater
September 29—Austin, TX—The Paramount Theatre
October 1—Houston, TX—Stafford Centre
October 3—Dallas, TX—Texas Theatre
October 5—Santa Fe, NM—Lensic Performing Arts Center
October 7—Marfa, TX—Saint George Hall

(Photo Credit Koto Bolofo / Courtesy Sacks and Co.)