Review: Nu Civilisation Orchestra, St George’s- ‘A highly talented group of the very highest calibre’

In the bustle of the St George’s bar tonight I overhear a conversation. A woman is reflecting that Hejira is her favourite Joni Mitchell album.  Blue is the one that tends to find its way into those 50 greatest albums of all time lists.

The epitome of early Joni and that Californian acoustic, female singer songwriter idiom she had come to define. A couple of years later she has found another voice with Court & Spark and The Hissing of the Summer Lawns as masterpieces of mid 70s LA jazz rock songcraft.

We are here tonight to celebrate her third artistic act. Starting with Hejira in 1976, Joni was exploring further her fascination with the jazz sounds of the day. Increasingly intrigued by the Miles Davis alumni finding their voices in Weather Report and Herbie Hancock’s bands of this period.

She would follow this muse to her collaboration with the then ailing jazz great Charles Mingus on 1979’s Mingus. A less artistically successful record but providing well chosen contrast tonight with more room for improvisation than the more tightly written pieces of Hejira.

These sprawling, lyrically dense, musings on travel, freedom and love are not easy music to sing. The task for that falls tonight to the Mercury Prize nominated Eska. Owner of a technically precise deep soul voice that is able to sweep and fly through these extraordinary songs.

She is fronting along with conductor Peter Edwards the sizable Nu Civilisation Orchestra who easily pack out the stage. They are a multi-generational combo with the inspirational Tomorrow’s Warriors talent development project providing a pathway for both young and older to the stage tonight.

They find an early confidence with Hejira’s Coyote, a tale of female emancipation written during the testosterone fuelled environment of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review.

Edwards comments that the audience are already with them and as I glance across I can see the front stalls mouthing every word and swinging in unison.

They are flying by Mingus’ The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines. Throughout they amplify the jazz roots of these songs. Eska scatts her way through the opening bars.

Bassist Jihad Darwish, who has the not inconsiderable task of playing homage to both Mingus but also Jaco Pastorius, whose sliding fretless bass is one of the defining musical markers of these records, shines here.

The second set opens with Amelia. A shifting, unsettling travelogue reflecting on a relationship breakdown with a walk on part for aviator Amelia Earhart some way in. Eska finds the poetry, pain and hope in the lyric.

They close with a take on Black Crow with a thick funk setting that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Blaxploitation film Soundtrack. By the time everyone has crooned and stomped along to encore – God Must be a Boogie Man – the hall are on their feet for a joyous standing ovation.

A high class celebration of some of the greatest, sophisticated popular music of the 70s or any era by a highly talented and passionate group of the very highest calibre.

Main photo: Martin Siddorn

Read next:

• Bristol’s month in jazz – December 2022
• Review: Matt Deighton, The Folk House – ‘Utterly mesmeric’
• When a plan comes together…

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