MUSICAL theatre star Elaine Paige said "farewell" to a full touring schedule with her 2014 solo travels to mark her 50-year singing career. Two years later, she nevertheless is mounting a 20-date run of weekend concerts from October to December, taking in Scarborough Spa on Sunday and Leeds Grand Theatre on December 11.

Her Stripped Back shows will see Elaine perform her favourite tracks from an array of contemporary songwriters with a group of four musicians. "I'm so excited about this series of 'weekend' concerts," said 68-year-old Elaine. "Having made the decision not to do a back-to-back tour again, this appealed to me not only because of the schedule, but as I've marked my 50 years on stage, this is going to allow me to do something completely different too."

What is the show's format? "It's a brand new show celebrating the contemporary songwriters I love, such as Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb, Burt Bacharach, Leonard Cohen, Sting, Elton John, Lennon & McCartney...the list goes on," says Elaine, whose set list will embrace the likes of Memory, I Know Him So Well, With One Look, Macarthur Park and Help.

"Their music has been the soundtrack to all our lives, not just mine. And it's the ideal opportunity to perform in an intimate way; I played the Royal Albert Hall with the 60-piece BBC Concert Orchestra; now I'm doing these new shows 'Stripped Back'!"

Explaining her philosophy behind focussing on bursts of weekend shows, Elaine says: "It's not just the voice I have to think about. It's the whole physicality of performing. It's so different from those years in my 20s, 30s or 40s. It just takes a lot longer to recover in your sixties, when you're still expending the same energy but the recovery rate is slower to be on the ball for the next show."

York Press:

Eaine Paige: "It's an old cliché but music is a common language"

Choosing the set list is "always a careful process" for Elaine. "Usually it's a balance of up-tempo numbers and ballads, but this time the show is something different as it's an homage to the songwriters of the Sixties and Seventies, which is the era when I was listening to the music of Lennon and McCartney, Paul Simon, Bacharach and David," she says.

"Happily it will conjure memories for the audience, just as I have memories of those songs that have stayed with me, so I tell anecdotes about the songs and what they mean to me."

Reflecting on the abiding impact of the music of the Sixties and Seventies, Elaine says: "I think it was a huge explosion of creativity. We were coming out of austerity after the war. Things started looking up with Lonnie Donegan and Elvis Presley, and by the Sixties the Establishment was being challenged by the youth of the day.

"There was the reaction to the Vietnam War; LSD; smoking dope and grass; the invention of the pill for women. It was a huge change for us ladies as it gave us freedom without fear of pregnancy.

"We were the baby boomers who were lucky enough to experience the change, and even now, in my late-sixties, we're still benefiting because we're much younger in our attitude and our health is better. We're the ones who have gained in every way."

As for the unifying power of music, Elaine says: "It's an old cliché but music is a common language. No matter what language you speak, you understand music. It has its own language which we all comprehend."

Elaine Paige's Stripped Back tour visits Scarborough Spa on Sunday, 7.30pm, and Leeds Grand Theatre, December 11, 7.30pm. Box office: Scarborough, 01723 821888 or scarboroughspa.co.uk/events; Leeds, 0844 848 2700 or leedsgrandtheatre.com