Review: Jazz Dames, St George’s

If the Bristol International Jazz & Blues Festival have learned one thing in their first three years it’s that swing music gets feet onto the dance floor and also – as this near sell-out St George’s gig proved – puts bums on seats. Marking the launch of the programme (and ticket sales) for the 2016 festival the Jazz Dames evening was meant to be a celebration of both the legacy of the great female jazz vocalists and the current generation of women singers on the Bristol scene. It was thus regrettable that the (male) compére started with one of those ham-fistedly sexist jokes that male jazz musicians used to think were funny but, of course, once the music started the ‘dames’ more than proved their worth. 

With seven singers plus a house trio on the bill the logistics could have been a nightmare but this was happily solved by having the vocalists seated on sofas behind the band until each took their turn at the microphone. If being watched by six of your peers was unnerving for them it didn’t show and what emerged was a rather unique opportunity to compare and contrast the very different musical personalities of Tammy Payne, Emily Wright, Lucy Moon, Molly King, Nadine ‘Lady Nade’ Gingell and Katya Gorrie. 

It would be unfair to single out any individual performances from this highly varied set of covers ranging from the poignant (Victoria Klewin’s Don’t Explain) to the melodramatic (Katya Gorrie’s Lush Life), the sleazy (Nadine Gingell’s Lola), the wistful (Tammy Payne’s Embraceable You), the sombre(Emily Wright’s You Must Believe in Spring), the blues-drenched (Molly King’s Black Coffee) and the sparkling (Lucy Moon’s Goody Goody). On the whole this confirmed their individual well-established reputations and were suitably well received by the very enthusiastic audience.

What was really special, however, were a number of collaborations that took full advantage of their differing styles. These included a proper jazz reading of Night In Tunisia with Tammy Payne’s fearless scat singing counterposed with Nadine Gingell’s rounded depth and Nadine’s similarly haunting pairing with Molly King’s more contemporary inflections on Work Song. Another three-handed a cappella number proved to be the stand out moment of the evening, however, when Lucy Moon, Katya Gorrie and Emily Wright took on the Boswell Sisters arrangement of Shout Sister Shout. The lyrics made it a perfect choice – ‘there ain’t no reason why a man’s so simple’ – but the Boswell’s swooping complexity and harmonic precision made it a brave challenge that the three women met admirably, with clear enjoyment shining from them by the end.

Plaudits must go to pianist George Cooper and his trio with Will Harris (bass) and Matt Brown (drums)  who managed to give each number fresh energy and stuck to the eight-bar discipline for solos that complemented the vocals without ever stealing the show, as did Craig Crofton’s occasional saxophone contributions. It all felt like a splendidly uncompetitive event – would seven male saxophonists have handled it that way, I wonder? – and by the rousing singalong finale of It’s A Good Day it looked like the Jazz Dames really felt it to be so.