Audrey McGraw & Toni Cornell Light Up Sold Out Green Note With Stunning TALENTBANQ Showcase

LIVE REVIEW | Audrey McGraw w/ Toni Cornell | The Green Note, Camden | 26th May 2025 by Kevin O’Sullivan

Some gigs feel important before a note’s even been played. Not because of hype exactly, but because everybody in the room seems aware they might be catching artists right at the beginning of something much bigger. Tuesday night at Green Note had that feeling hanging over it from the second the sold out crowd squeezed through the doors.

Audrey McGraw and Toni Cornell arriving together in a tiny Camden venue already sounded surreal on paper. Two artists carrying famous surnames, sure, but thankfully neither leaning on them for attention. What mattered across the night was the music, and both proved pretty quickly they’ve got far more going on than family history.

McGraw especially feels like an artist finding her own lane in real time. Reviews and online chatter around her recent shows have kept circling back to the same thing — the voice. Smoky, restrained and properly soulful without ever forcing it. Influences like Linda Ronstadt, Mazzy Star and Jeff Buckley make perfect sense once you hear her live.

The timing of this Green Note show made it feel even more remarkable. Nearly 12 months ago, as support for Brandi Carlile, she’d stepped onto the enormous stage of the Royal Albert Hall, and then Wednesday night she returned there again as a guest during Jack Savoretti’s headline performance. To go from one of London’s most iconic venues back into the tiny, packed intimacy of Green Note says quite a lot about where she’s at as an artist right now.

And honestly, Green Note suited her perfectly.

There’s nowhere to hide in that room. No giant production, no distractions, no safety net. Just songs landing directly in front of people barely a few feet away. McGraw handled it beautifully, drifting between delicate folk, smoky Americana and something slightly darker that gave the whole set an edge lots of younger singer-songwriters never quite find.

One of the night’s genuine highlights came with a stunning version of Neil Diamond’s I Am… I Said. It could have easily tipped into karaoke territory in lesser hands, but instead it completely silenced the room. One of those moments where you could physically feel people leaning in closer. Proper shivers-down-the-spine stuff.

Things lifted another level when Hero Fisher joined McGraw onstage. Fisher has a fantastic voice herself, warm and soulful but still carrying real power when needed. Their harmonies together felt effortless. Beside them throughout the night was guitarist Adam Chetwood, whose playing added so much texture and atmosphere to the set without ever overpowering it. An incredible guitarist and musician, something further proved the following night at Hero Fisher’s sold out performance at TALENTBANQ’s brilliant 21 Soho venue.

Toni Cornell brought something different again. More understated maybe, but deeply affecting in places. There’s an emotional weight that naturally follows her because of her father’s legacy, but she never leaned into it theatrically. Instead the set felt personal, careful and quietly confident. The harmonies across the evening carried some genuinely lovely moments too, the kind that silenced a busy London crowd without anybody really noticing it happening.

A huge amount of credit belongs with TALENTBANQ for putting nights like this together. In an industry increasingly obsessed with algorithms and viral moments, TALENTBANQ continue backing actual songwriters and proper live music experiences. Ray Jones deserves special mention too. His enthusiasm for live music is completely contagious. Not the forced industry version either, but genuine excitement from somebody who clearly still loves discovering artists and watching audiences connect with them for the first time. His compere work between sets kept the whole evening warm, loose and personal.

By the end of the night, nobody really cared about surnames anymore. That disappeared pretty quickly once the music started.

What remained was the feeling that Audrey McGraw and Toni Cornell are building something real on their own terms. And in a venue as intimate and unforgiving as Green Note, that becomes obvious very quickly.

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Kevin O'Sullivan

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