For once I went to a concert at the spectacular Howard Assembly Room knowing what I was going to get, rather than opening myself up to a form of music with which I was not familiar. I have always enjoyed the music of Django Reinhardt and his long-time musical partner, Stéphane Grappelli, co-founders of the Quintette du Hot Club de France. Their style of music was known as Jazz Manouche, or Gypsy Jazz, reflecting Reinhardt’s Belgian-French Romani background.
When I say I knew what I was going to get, that was not quite true, as the concert was described on Opera North’s website as being lesser known music from M Reinhardt as well as works by composers who had influenced his writing, such as Ravel and Debussy.
The Distilled series comprises hour-long concerts featuring players from the staff of Opera North, giving the audience a chance to experience small ensembles at close quarters, presenting chamber music in its purest sense. The artists here were: Susannah Simmons, Violin, Vernon Bigsby, Guitar and Gerard Paul Cavallari, Guitar, collectively known as Trio Boba Swing; along with guests Amy J Payne, Mezzo-Soprano and Philip Voldman, Piano.
I will get the negatives out of the way first, and say that I am afraid that Ms Simmons made a bit of a hash in the role of compère, forgetting the running order on several occasions, and also neglecting to introduce the members of the ensemble and, when reminded, only gave their first names. She needed to be prompted by Ms Payne and the two guitarists, even though she had several sheets of notes in her hand. Speaking of notes, there was none available to the audience, either in printed form or on-line, which, as a lot of the pieces’ names were in languages other than English, made identification difficult, if not impossible. She also explored a lot of personal rabbit holes – nothing wrong with that, I do it all the time in these articles, but when there is a time constraint, I found the list of places she had inhabited, a bit superfluous to the matter in hand. She obviously realised this as, before the last piece, which was already late, she said that if any of us needed to leave to catch public transport, they were welcome to do so. What surprised me was that this was not a one-off concert, but had been performed a few days previously as part of the Kirklees Concert Season.
Left to right: Philip Voldman, Amy J Payne, Susannah Simmons, Vernon Bigsby and Gerard Paul Cavallari.
Now that that is out of the way let me get to the music, which was superb, in both its curation and execution. There was not as much jazz as I had hoped for, but that didn’t matter as the relevant introductions were very informative and helped put Django Reinhardt’s composition in some sort of perspective. The pieces by Ravel, Debussy and Grieg, who was also an influence, were explained by Amy J Payne who, not only sang the classical works, but, being an opera singer, acted them out, which helped both as a translation and a source of humour, especially in the song about an abbot at a garden party who gets progressively more drunk as the bash progresses, finally coming on to a ballerina who is present. Her rendition of La Vie en Rose gave the Édith Piaf classic a whole new dimension. Her voice was strong and pure, in stark contrast to the guttural rasp of the Sparrow, whose vocal cords had been subjected to years of abuse from drink, tobacco and drugs.
The piano parts from Philip Voldman, who the internet tells me, is a Senior Lecturer at Leeds Conservatoire and a collaborative pianist both here and in his native USA, extracted every nuance from the beautiful Steinway, which, for once, escaped being plucked from under the lid.
The Manouche Jazz pieces were superbly presented by Susanna Simmons, whose shortcomings as a compère I will gladly forgive after her brilliant musical performance, Gerard Paul Cavallari provided, what we used to call in sixties groups, rhythm guitar, although when given his chance to play solo, acquitted himself admirably, as he did when called upon to sing. Finally there was Vernon Bigsby who took most of the guitar solos and carried them off perfectly, infusing the spirit as well as the tone.
Should you not be familiar with the works of Django Reinhardt, I have found this on YouTube which features him with Stéphane Grappelli on violin. One of the things I discovered while having to search the web for information, is that he was badly burned in a fire and, as a result, was only able to use two fingers on his fretting hand but still managed to come up with this. Amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doVLqNn9j2I
For more about Boba Swing please go to https://www.facebook.com/p/Boba-Swing-61553568790378/ they are well worth seeing.
To see what other delights are coming up at Howard Assembly Room it is https://www.operanorth.co.uk/event-tag/har/
Feature image from Open North. Photograph by Stan Graham
Tyke It To The Limit 