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With her new album Suit Yourself<\/em> and upcoming tour date in Cardiff, singer and songwriter Judith Owen talks to Charlotte Hardie-Watts about her success, emotion in musical performance and what the Welsh crowd can expect from her June show.<\/strong><\/p>\n A Carmarthenshire native long settled in New Orleans, Judith Owen returns to Wales in early June, with a show in the Cabaret space at Cardiff\u2019s Wales Millennium Centre. She\u2019s also got a new album, Suit Yourself<\/em>, to play for us, and she\u2019s eager to talk about it.<\/p>\n \u201cSuit Yourself<\/em> is about being a powerful woman. I am drawing on all the things that I am, being the powerhouse, a band leader, an arranger, a pianist. So it\u2019s every aspect of the artist and performer that I am and want to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Working with an eclectic palette, Owen boils down her music to \u201ca mix of jazz, blues, pop, rock and a bit of classical\u201d. These various styles have differing virtues, she thinks: jazz, for example, \u201cis about being a place that takes you away from all sorts of scary things happening around the world right now.\u201d Conversely, when I bring up how language functions in song, Owen says, \u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m a classical baby \u2013 the music is the emperor of emotion without words.\u201d<\/p>\n \n