GROWING up in the tiny village of Kildwick, only15 minutes away from Harrogate, Clare Teal remembers visiting “the posh town with the posh tea room” as a child.

Now, the North Yorkshire singer is a guest programmer for the 2011 Harrogate International Summer Festival, a curator’s role that has seen her bring the likes of the BBC Big Band, Paloma Faith, Pee Wee Ellis and Ian Shaw to Harrogate as part of the festival’s jazz strand.

Explaining her programming brief, Clare says: “I think it’s come about because I’ve had quite a connection with this festival for a number of years, and I consider festivals to be very important in a niche market as it gives people a chance to hear music they otherwise might not hear.”

Clare has performed already with the BBC Big Band on July 8 as their special guest at the Royal Hall, where she will return tomorrow when Sir Michael Parkinson presents Clare Teal & Friends in A Celebration of the Great British Songbook at 7.30pm (box office, 01423 502116 or harrogate-festival.org.uk).

Fellow Yorkshire dignitary Parky will be the master of ceremonies and jazz songbook history tour guide for an 8pm concert that will feature Clare’s special guests, singer Ian Shaw and saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis, former musical director for Van Morrison and James Brown.

“Michael and I are going to eat cake all afternoon at Bettys,” says Clare, looking forward to her return to “the posh tea room”.

As for “the guys I’m bringing north”, Clare is delighted to have Ellis and Shaw as her guests. “You should hear the stories Pee Wee tells from his days with James Brown at the time of I Feel Good – he really was a founder of funk – and bizarrely I work a lot with him,” she says.

“We’re unlikely bedfellows, but he started his career in jazz and lives in Frome [Clare lives not too far away in Bath] after Van Morrison brought him over here from America to be his musical director. We first met five years ago at a charity event where we were thrown together and asked to do something, just Pee Wee and me and a pianist.

“I just want everyone to see him as he’s one of those people music just falls out of. If he decides he wants to rehearse at 4am in the next room, he will.”

Ian Shaw may be Shaw by name, but Clare is never sure what to expect when she performs with him. “He’s a great singer but you don’t know what will happen as he’s a loose cannon, always at my expense,” she says. “We always have a laugh and a musical giggle too.

“Pee Wee and Ian are the finest guys in the land in their field and they should be heard. This is the thing about niche music: it doesn’t have the spotlight and without festivals like this one, you might not see them.”

Now 38, Clare spent her teen years resisting the pop charms of Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon and the pleadings of Nik Kershaw, instead spending her time in the attic listening to her grandmother’s 78s. “I was obsessed with the singers of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties,” she recalls of an obsession that has led to her tenth album, Hey Ho, a celebration of the Great British Songbook that spans almost 120 years.

“It goes back to 1889 and goes through to today with a couple of recent songs, Snow Patrol’s Run and Annie Lennox’s Why,” she says. “They’re all folk songs, pop songs, because jazz is folk, just different folk, and pop is folk, just different eras.”