MARY Chapin Carpenter has been through a lot since we last saw her in Yorkshire.

In one year, she was seriously ill, with a blocked lung and later depression; her marriage ended and her father died. She talked of this part way through Thursday's sublime concert, where she had so warmed to the rapt audience appreciation at Pocklington Arts Centre's inaugural Platform Festival in the Old Station.

This is what songwriters do: opening up to a room of strangers in a way that others wouldn't, but then that's why we love writers of the confessional country variety, such as East Coast American Mary Chapin, whose acoustic story-telling songs strike a chord with those who have lived and loved and won and lost, sometimes happy, other times lonely.

Her response to her annus horribilis was to write 2012's Ashes And Roses, which duly provided two of the highlights of her set of "last century" favourites and newer numbers, performed with her stalwart piano player, Jon Carroll, and her new fellow guitarist, by the first name of Jonathan, who was bedding in impressively in his second week. Transcendental Reunion, a flight of hope, and Chasing What's Already Gone, whose title says it all, encapsulated Mary Chapin's gift for summing up life's vicissitudes.

She always judges a set list so well. Here there was the early punch of Shut Up And Kiss Me; her finest humanist piece John Doe No. 24; and a beautifully tender and slow rendition of Lucy Williams' Passionate Kisses that suited Mary Chapin's softer voice than of yore.

Derbyshire folk singer Bella Hardy, such a good choice for the support slot, sang in perfect harmony at the finale before Mary Chapin returned alone to announce her new album was ready for release early next year. It was time to give its songs "legs and wings" she said, showcasing The Things That We Are Made Of, just her and her guitar and a spellbound audience for a typically resonant story. How brave to finish this way, in uncharted waters, but how right too, looking ahead to better days at 57.

Charles Hutchinson