Perth Festival: Grappelli Night
Perth Theatre - 26/05/23
Seonaid Aitken Quintet: Seonaid Aitken, violin | Conor Smith, guitar | Dan Brown, piano | Andy Sharkey, bass | Max Popp, drums
The Curlew: Alice Allen, cello | Gabi Maas, violin & nyckelharpa
To commemorate 25 years since the death of the great jazz violinist Stéphane Grappelli, the Perth Festival of the Arts welcomed our own very versatile and gifted player, Seonaid Aitken, with four other jazz musicians, to the Perth Theatre on the night of Friday 26th May, in emulation of the Quintette du Hot Club de France and with a programme of gems selected from the French master’s 6-decade career. The jazz quintet was supported by a folk duo, our own classical/folk cellist Alice Allen with the very versatile Gabi Maas, playing violin and nyckelharpa, who opened the programme with a selection of Irish and Scandinavian folk melodies named for their recent album, ‘The Curlew’.
Alice and Gabi opened with a set of 3 Irish reels, ‘Within a Mile of Dublin/Tuttle’s/The Curlew’, in an arrangement for violin and cello that featured a ‘swung’ melody, some lovely harmonies, a rhythmic pulsating cello part and mimicry of the call of the wading bird. Gabi switched to nyckelharpa for the next piece, a Swedish ¾-time couples barn dance called a Polska. The nyckelharpa is bowed with a short bow and keyed like a hurdy-gurdy, sounding a bit like a viola, but with clicking sounds as the keys are actuated. Blind Irish harper, Turlough O'Carolan’s mournful ‘Wounded Hussar’, dedicated to the Irish mercenary, Captain O’Kane, who returned wounded from an illustrious military career in the early 18th-century Low Countries to find himself outlawed, dispossessed and impoverished, received the same exotic, atmospheric instrumentation. Back to the fiddle for a Norwegian halling, a showy acrobatic young man’s solo dance – this was absolutely brilliant. If the dance is as energetic as the music, it must be pretty spectacular. Their set concluded, still violin and cello, with a fast Irish reel, ‘Farewell to Ireland’. Alice and Gabi are engaging and charismatic, their enthusiasm and evident glee in exploring and persuasively revealing arcane repertoire is thoroughly infectious. A super (if briefer) first ‘half’ to the concert.
After the interval, it was the turn of the headlining jazz quintet. Seonaid was joined by Conor Smith on guitar, Dan Brown on piano, Andy Sharkey on pizzicato double bass and Max Popp on jazz drumkit. The selection opened with the signature Grappelli treatment of Sonny Rollins’ ‘Pent-Up House’, as hot as you like. Seonaid introduced the band and, after a brief biographical note on the master’s early years, gave us a deliciously ornamented version of Fats Waller’s ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’. Next up and firmly in Hot Club territory, two Django Reinhardt numbers: a dreamy rhapsodic ‘Nuages’ with fab harmonies, segueing after an amazing cadenza into a superfast superheated ‘Daphne’ – quite excellent and a chance for Conor Smith to shine.
Stéphane recorded hundreds of pieces with other artists, including, in 1973, the 1930 classic ‘Them There Eyes’ with jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. This was covered next with some elegant pianism from Dan Brown. Conor Smith’s guitar intro to Hoagie Carmichael’s smoochy number ‘Stardust’, which was played next, was very beautiful. The Kern/Hammerstein classic, “Ol’ Man River” from ‘Showboat’, slow and soulful at first, then very hot, the authentic Grappelli/Reinhardt treatment, was delivered with some lovely teasing modulations. The credit for first launching the artistic collaboration of Grappelli and classical artist Yehudi Menuhin falls to Michael Parkinson in a 1971 chat show. This was represented by Jacob Gade’s Jalousie "Tango Tzigane". And yes, Seonaid did appear to be playing both parts. Breathtaking.
Perhaps less well known is a later two-violin collaboration between Stéphane and classical Japanese artist Iwao Furusawa, leading to an album recorded in 1996, ‘As Time Goes By’. The title number, a 1931 song by Hermann Hupfeld made famous in the 1942 movie ‘Casablanca’, was played next – quite glorious. The swinging heat was turned up again for a concluding spirited rendition of Duke Ellington’s tasty ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing’.
The Perth audience was not going to let them away without an encore: we got an old 1925 favourite in Hot Club clothing, ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’, bringing an evening of great entertainment to a toe-tapping close. Excellent.