Melismatic sweep … Dianne Reeves, leading a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie at the Royal Albert Hall. Photograph: Mark Allan
Royal Albert Hall, London
Contralto Dianne Reeves and musical polymath James Morrison are lively guides through a classical tour of the jazz songbook
This Prom celebrates the centenaries of Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie, two legends who defined and transcended jazz. It is tricky to find anyone who can fill their boots, but the Proms have rustled up two suitably extrovert performers: singer Dianne Reeves and the Australian trumpeter James Morrison.
Reeves’s voice is closer to that of Dinah Washington or Sarah Vaughan than to Fitzgerald’s; her chesty contralto sounds more like a powerful trombone compared to the dainty clarinet that was Fitzgerald’s mezzo-soprano. But she certainly has the latter’s facility to tell a story as she improvises over a melody, each grace note and melismatic sweep animating the lyric.
Morrison is an astonishing multi-instrumentalist. He has recorded albums where he multi-tracks a 17-piece big band, playing each instrument to an astonishingly high standard. He’s also led bands in London and New York, and worked with dozens of legends, including Gillespie, but living on the other side of the world means he often gets ignored by the rest of the music scene. Tonight he proves that he can do all of Gillespie’s show-pony tricks, hitting the thrilling high notes on A Night in Tunisia and Cherokee, and holding on to trills for so long that you start to think he’s got a tank of air hidden under his suit. He can also carry a ballad such as Round Midnight, elegantly slurring through the melody as if sculpting molten metal.
read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/06/prom-27-ella-and-dizzy-a-centenary-tribute-review-virtuosic-hat-tip-to-jazz-legends-greatest-hits
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