She's been a card-carrying punk, a blues shouter and a dance-floor diva. Now Alison Moyet - possessor of one of the most expressive voices in pop music - is heading for Bournemouth on a rare UK tour.

The revered singer/songwriter arrives in town for a concert at the Pavilion Theatre on Saturday February 16. Tickets are on sale now.

Moyet has enjoyed success in the music business and, more recently in the world of theatre, has starred as Mama Morton in the West End musical Chicago.

Now with a new album due out next month, she's poised to re-establish her credentials as a high-profile recording artist.

It's been a long, strange journey for this anglo-French Essex girl who was training to be a piano tuner when the punk revolutions whisked her into the music scene in the late 1970s and early '80s.

It was the band Yazoo, formed with former Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke, that propelled her into the public eye. Two years later she launched a solo career with her debut album Alf, and within a few months she was a big star, appearing at Live Aid in 1985 and famously providing emergency vocals when a microphone failed during Paul McCartney's finale rendition of Let It Be.

Her career has simmered along ever since, although record company litigation meant she was unable to release a recording for some eight years.

The fan-base remained true, though, and Moyet's most recent works have once again started raising her profile.

In the past few months she has signed new record and management deals. The result is the album The Turn which is released on October 15, preceded a week before by a single, One More Time.