Ever since he exploded onto the music scene nearly 20 years ago, Alfie has racked up one extraordinary achievement after another. He has two UK Number 1 albums to his credit, while ‘Together’ and ‘Together Again’, his collaborations with good friend Michael Ball, have sold more than one million copies.
Don’t miss his Newmarket Nights debut live after racing this summer!
I’ve placed a bet before at Cheltenham, I think we’re still waiting for the horse to come in… 2 years later! I’m not very good at horse racing, not very good at the betting side of it. They weren’t huge bets, it was just a little dabble, a little tibble on the horses but I’m not at all educated on trainers, the breed of the horse or anything like that. If it’s got four legs and runs then I’ll put a bet on it!
The good thing about it is the weather – fingers crossed! People seem to be in a great mood the audience is on fire at events like this and they’re really tee’d up for a good time, they come up to the stage and they’re really enthusiastic, their energy level is pretty big. Which in a sense feeds me with more energy to perform better in a way.
I’m always doing my own shows as well as performing with Michael but it’s always nice to do both, its nice to be able to continue doing my own thing, then teaming up with Michael when necessary! It’s a different ball game obviously because sharing the stage with somebody is great, but it’s always nice to be the headliner!
It’s pretty much down to you what you do in your own show and as it is your own preference you don’t have to compromise with anyone else’s choices or anything like that. With my show, my shows are quite eclectic so you get a broad range of music, from Neapolitan folk music, to musical theatre, rock music, soul. In this particular show that I’m doing I’ve been writing a lot of my own stuff as well now, so there will be a few original songs in there that I’m performing.
It ticks the box of quite a few categories because it’s my own sort of creation. I would say it has a soul vibe to it – gospel soul feel – big songs that lend themselves to my voice. Bring out the big notes and give me the opportunity to fire on all cylinders!
It’s the sort of genre that tends to work well for my voice; I like lots of different areas of music. But I suppose when it comes to my own personal music I do like that area, the gospel sort of soul stuff, its great and great to sing. It lends itself to my personal sound.
Yeah sometimes I do! It depends again what mood we’re to the music that we play. We do have a wide range of taste in my household, so its good – if we’re feeling in a country mood, we’ll put the country songs on. I’m going through at the moment playing a lot of vinyl records, you know classic albums. I’ve got quite a collection of vinyl stuff and its good to go back and investigate.
Yeah you never know, you never know! I like to jump behind the kit occasionally. I’ve been playing since I was a young kid, so yeah I might get up you never know, do us a couple of songs, it’d give me that opportunity to do so I might surprise everyone with that!
Yes it does, I’ve found quite a few performers that I think have great potential and I like to encourage and give them some advice and enthusiasm for taking it further. Some guys I listen to blow me away when it comes to their sound and what they’ve written and their ability to play instruments and sing, so you know if I can help in that sense I am very happy to do so.
There’s a young kid actually from Boston in America that I’ve been sort of mentoring for a while, a guy called Walter Burmer. People should check his music out; you know he’s got a great YouTube channel and he really puts himself out there and I’ve sort of been advising him, mentoring, got him singing lessons and that sort of thing. He’s pretty good, he’s a pretty good singer/songwriter and I’m very impressed with him so I’m sort of looking out for him at the moment.
You know it’s a role that I love to play; it’s a character that I love to play. It seems to always hit me at the right time of my life to play the role. But this was definitely, I think I should say the last time, but you know I don’t want to keep going back to it. There are lots of roles, lots of other shows I’d like to do. It seemed a great opportunity to be a part of a real special celebration of Les Mis again. I did the 25th anniversary, I did a run in the West End and then I did a run of it on Broadway and then I came back to do this final one. I’ve enjoyed it, I’ve loved it and it will always stay with me be close to my heart.
There’s lots of shows I’m sort of looking at but I never have a list of things I want to do because I often find that characters roles and plays sort of just cross my path. Come to me naturally, rather than going out and doing the search I like to in a sense sort of consider that those characters come find me or we meet somewhere at some point and then its whether or not I feel I could do it justice and that sort of thing. I’ve never gone out for the search for a character, or a role or a play. There are lots of shows out there that’s I’d love to see – there are some great shows out there that give me a lot of enthusiasm.
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