With a career spanning five decades, Norma Winstone has reached
a point as a performer where she could simply take it easy and coast on her
reputation as an accomplished jazz vocalist and improviser. Instead, her set at
the Royal Northern College of Music which formed part of the Manchester Jazz
Festival 2018, drew almost entirely on material culled from her latest album
release, Descansado – Songs for Films. Backed by her regular collaborators,
Klaus Gesing on saxophones and bass clarinet, and Glauco Venier on piano, the
trio presented a programme of stripped back arrangements of music adapted from
an international range of films. Joining the trio for many of the songs was
Abel Selaocoe on cello, himself a recent graduate of the RNCM. The songs gave
Winstone the chance to sing and engage in her wordless vocalisations which she
has become famous for.
The set began, as does the Descansado album, with the song
His Eyes, Her Eyes (originally from the 1968 version of The Thomas Crown
Affair). Winstone’s vocals, which ranged from lower to higher tones, backed
against the gentle piano of Venier and the soprano saxophone of Gesing, seemed
to channel the vocal tones and moods heard within the early vocal performances
of Chet Baker and Scott Walker. Selaocoe joined them for the second song of the
night, What is a Youth? (taken from Franco Zafferilli’s film of Romeo and
Juliet). His work on the cello was highly impressive and evocative as Gesing
provided suitably mournful tones on the bass clarinet while Venier plucked
piano strings to create a thudding beat while Winstone sang of how “A rose will
bloom/It then will fade.” Selaocoe then provided percussion for a rendition of
the title track of the Descansado album, which featured lyrics written by
Winstone herself, by using the back of his cello to create a beat. Winstone
herself began to drop in some light jazz scat singing during the song, clearly
having warmed her voice up on the previous songs.
The following song, Amarcord (from the Fellini film of the
same name) opened with a delicate intro on piano from Venier before Winstone
gave what was her strongest vocal performance of the night up to that point.
This was swiftly followed by Lisbon Story (from the Wim Wenders film of the
same name) which boasted sterling work from Gesing on saxophone while Winstone
went full-on with her jazz vocal improvising throughout the performance. The
emotive singing on Malena brought drama back to the evening before the group
diverted from material from the Descansado album but kept within the evening’s
film theme by presenting a jazz deconstruction of the song Everybody’s Talkin’
from the film Midnight Cowboy. While it is impossible to separate Harry
Nilsson’s vocals from that song, Winstone wisely played to her strengths while
the instrumentalists stripped away the country-tinge of the original recording
by slowing the tempo down and reconfiguring the song as a late-night torch
song. At the end of the performance, the group segued into a piece written by
Venier called Second Spring, where Winstone improvised some vocalisations.
The short but incredibly poignant performance of music from
Jean-Luc Godard’s 1962 film Vivre Sa Vie, showcased Venier’s delicate piano
playing and Winstone’s silky vocalisations before the group ventured into
darker territory with a reworking of the theme by Bernard Hermmann for the film
Taxi Driver. Winstone’s written lyrics to this song reflected the sense of
oppressive urban gloom present in the film (the song, presumably, is from the
perspective of Jodie Foster’s character, Iris). The group soon lightened the
mood with a performance of The Gaelic Reels from Rob Roy was a melding of jazz
and Celtic-folk which featured Gesing on one of the smallest flute’s ever seen
– but despite its small size it still packed a tuneful punch. The following
performance, of music from Il Postino featured a delightful vocal performance
from Winstone and a fantastic performance from Selaocoe on the cello. There was
also a poignant rendition of Touch Her Soft Lips and Part from the Lawrence
Olivier film of Henry V, which Winstone sang beautifully on. The final song of
the set was Meryton Townhall from the 2005 film version of Pride and Prejudice
and again gave Winstone the chance to improvise some vocalisations. The group
returned for an encore, The Titles, with music by Gesing and beautiful words by
Winstone telling the story of a man who sits in a cinema waiting for the end
credits to end before going back out into the real world. As a final piece to the
night, it could not have been more fitting both in terms of performance and in
keeping with the theme of the other songs in the set.
The performances were well-received and Winstone herself
came across with a light touch of self-deprecating humour in between the songs
and was ready to point out the considerable strengths of her collaborators. The
evening was elegant and full of drama and passion.
Reviewer - Andrew Marsden
on – 27/7/18
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