Review: Roberto Solo Fonseca, St George’s

The St George’s stage looked set for a play, a kitchen sink drama based in a shabby bachelor apartment (albeit one with a grand piano in the middle). There was a fridge, a table, a radio and a sofa. There was a bowl of fruit and a few newspapers.

Later, Roberto Fonseca will have brandished a notice saying ‘welcome to my home’ after plumping up the cushions and eating a few grapes, but he arrived on stage to sit and listen to dance music on the crackling radio. After that he headed for the piano stool and began to play an evolving improvisation based on a simple rhythmic two-chord pattern reminiscent of Keith Jarrett’s solo work (an acknowledged influence of Fonseca’s). The piece built in energy and jazziness with the pianist looking skyward for inspiration before bringing it back to the beginning again.

For the second piece he went to the fridge and got out a can of beer and his trademark hat, presumably well cooled, before sitting on the sofa reading a paper and eating grapes. It wasn’t clear what this business was about but after a couple of minutes he headed back to the piano, this time incorporating a Nord Hammond keyboard and a Fender Rhodes electric piano positioned either side of the Steinway.

This arrangement allowed him to indulge in Rick Wakeman style multi-keyboard antics, at times stretched out wide to combine the electric keyboards, playing call and response with himself in a a kind of montuno boogaloo that eventually erupted into a huge classical cascade like Rachmaninov in a Havana backstreet bar.

Fonseca closed the first half with another song on the radio around which he began to weave a piano part, eventually explaining that the singer in the recording was his mother. He also tried to teach the audience a fairly subtle clapping pattern to accompany a classic Cuban piano riff – we weren’t very good at it, as his wry smile indicated, but the moment revealed an almost passionate enthusiasm for the pianist from the audience who were willing to comply with whatever he wanted. A later piece almost became an informal singalong and even the ushers wanted to join in.

By the time he came to the last number – a playfully regretful ballad whose Spanish title translated as What Made Me Leave it was clear he knew all about dealing with this fandom, rewarding it with an up-tempo gear change and a sudden remorseless four-to-the-floor left hand bassline he sustained unfeasibly with immense stamina.

Compared to his bigger band performances this was an odd affair, musically less adventurous much of the time. The exuberant audience were clearly pleased with it even though the stage set-up meant that for many he was almost completely concealed behind the prow of the Steinway, causing a few stalls ticket-holders to slip upstairs for a better view in the second half.

Quite whether the solo performance format suited him was equally obscured as he briskly stuck to his timetable and breezed off without any seeming chance of an encore for such a very warm and responsive audience. Undeniable, though, was their satisfaction whatever the constraints of the evening.