The brilliance of The Carpenters and the fascinating but ultimately tragic story behind them will be explored in The Carpenters Story: Rainy Days, Mondays & Good Old Dreams.

Kerry Le Bern brings Karen Carpenter’s soulful contralto to life in a show heading to the Festival Hall, Petersfield on September 18.

As Kerry says: “I think the main thing is that their music has a timeless quality to it. When they were in their ascendancy in the early 1970s they were doing something very different to what was going on in the industry which was rock music really. We have this rock music backdrop and then The Carpenters entered and did something totally different. They had the easy-listening sound. It was Richard's genius to arrange songs and have very complex instrumentation but also a layering of vocal harmonies. You got a wall of sound. It was almost choral at times. But the layer on top of that was Karen's unique vocal. You've got this wonderful delivery that always seems to be effortless. Whether it was or not I don't know. But you have all that coming together.

“They had a record label A&M that signed them up. They were an independent record label in Los Angeles and they let artists have a lot of free rein. They were not being prescriptive. And I think it allowed Richard to really go to town.”

As for Karen's voice: “She said that she had studied earlier popular women singers and they all sang in the basement. That's where she concentrated. She had this low contralto that was rich and warm and she maximised that. But it was also her ability to switch between the higher end and her lower vocal and just to glide through the vocal break with absolute ease.

“1970 to 75 they were in their ascendance. In the mid-1970s they started to drop off. They were trapped by their image. In early interviews they were quite outspoken on controversial subjects but then they got coached to be a lot more middle of the road and I think they became pigeonholed as the boy and girl next door. I think it was wearing a bit thin after five years. They cast about in the last five years in the late 1970s trying to do something different. They employed a Broadway choreographer to add more theatricality to their shows and musically they had stylistic departures. I think in those later stages they were trying to find their feet but on top of that, Karen's anorexia was getting worse and worse and Richard had an addiction. They were going through so much personal stuff.”

Kerry says she often wonders what Karen would be doing now had she lived: “We have this wonderful back catalogue but I really do think that she would have had a solo career. But as it was, it was just a very short story for her. It was the rising ascendancy of five years really fast. The touring schedule was off the scale. It was day after day after day so it was hardly surprising that they got completely shattered. And then you had the fall from grace when they were trying to do something different and then she plunged into complete tragedy.”

Tickets from the venues.