CRITICALLY-acclaimed composer, musician and singer Louise Jordan perform when the live tour ‘No Petticoats Here’ comes to Settle Victoria Hall at 7.30pm on Friday, September 8.

‘No Petticoats Here’ is a collection of original songs telling the stories of real-life inspirational women from the First World War.

Based on extensive research and combining live and recorded sound, this show aims to be a theatre concert like no other; a visual and auditory experience that connects the audience with the past.

Following two successful tours, Louise has been granted Arts Council England funding to develop the performance working with theatre director Lizzie Crarer and sound designer Jules Bushell.

“This one-woman performance will be very different to most concerts,” said Louise. “It will be enhanced by technology as I play pre-recorded sound tracks to bring the words of the women and the sounds they experienced to life around the songs I have written. I will also present images of the women and I will be in costume to help the audience visualise the stories.”

‘No Petticoats Here’ tells the real life stories of varied and remarkable women of the Great War through song and was inspired by the story of Dorothy Lawrence, an orphan whose guardian lived in Salisbury Cathedral Close.

Dorothy dressed as a soldier in order to visit the Western Front and pursue her journalistic ambitions.

Louise quickly became fascinated by the stories of female ambulance drivers, scientists, footballers and spies.

‘No Petticoats Here’ is the culmination of 12 months of research that has taken Louise to the battlefields of France and Belgium, including the Somme and Ypres, as well as countless museums and historic research centres.

Through contact with the relatives and biographers of some of these extraordinary women Louise has been able to add greater depth and detail to their stories bringing to life their courage and compassion.

Now a familiar face on the UK music scene, Louise has used her classical music background and her seven years’ experience of touring arts centres, theatres, folk clubs and festivals in the UK and Europe alongside her earlier career as a secondary school history teacher to produce ‘No Petticoats Here’.

“The First World War too often remembers women as the mourners of the fallen, as frugal housewives ‘making do’ or angelic nurses caring patiently for the men who returned from the Front Line. Through ‘No Petticoats Here’ I remember some of the many women whose stories do not fit conveniently into boxes and whose experiences are both astonishing and relatable one hundred years on.”

From the driving, rhythmic piano of ‘Queen of Spies’ which captures the story of the charming and bold Frenchwoman Louise de Bettignies, to the intensely personal ‘Mairi’ about the disintegration of a devoted friendship, this is an album as musically diverse as the women’s stories it tells.

Tickets for the 7.30pm performance on Friday, September 8, cost £10 and can be purchased online at settlevictoriahall.org.uk or by ringing 01729 825718.