Review: Lichfield Jazz and Blues Festival delivers plenty of brilliant live music - plus a strange occurrence
Let’s dance! In the early days of jazz and swing in the 1920s and 1930s, the style was principally a dance music, rather than being presented in seated concert halls and tiny clubs.
The organisation Lichfield Arts Jazz and Blues has been reviving the dance tradition in recent years, and its annual festival had a very special celebration aimed at getting feet flying as well as toes tapping.
But something very strange happened. The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s Salsa Orchestra, directed by Shanti Jayashina - a fine trumpet soloist in his own right - put on a vibrant show on Sunday (June 15). The volunteers who run the festival had moved all the chairs set out for seated listening, and rolled up the hotel function room’s enormous carpet to reveal its large dance floor. The music was compelling... but, bizarrely, no-one was dancing.
The audience sat still on the chairs which had been moved to the fringe of the dance floor, they applauded each salsa song enthusiastically... but for the first half of the show none of them danced. In the second set, two ladies got up and danced pretty impressively for just one number, but no-one joined them.
Weird. However, a very special performance followed - with a seated audience - featuring a truly superb rising star singer, Lydia Rae with her quartet. She gave a really joyful performance of standard songs and her own original compositions, with highlights including the opening song “Orange Coloured Sky”, the show song “It could Happen To You” and her own work “Stop By”.
Lydia, who is from Rugeley, was joined on stage by Lichfield trumpeter Nick Dewhurst for the Miles Davis composition “Four” - a strongly creative moment. Watch out for Lydia - she is a total delight.
The festival had opened on Thursday with the very fine trumpeter Bryan Corbett and his Instrumental Groove Unit at the Cathedral Hotel, with Steely Dan tribute band Nearly Dan appearing the following night at the Guildhall.
Then it was back to the Cathedral Hotel for Saturday afternoon concerts by Fugue’n’Groove, followed by drummer Roy Adams and Friends - a truly dynamic band.
Worcester pianist Richard Hughes leads Fugue’n’Groove, with Simon Smith on bass and Steve Street on drums, and they delighted the audience with a smoothly blended mixture of classical music and jazz, much in the style of French pianist Jacques Loussier and his Play Bach Trio, who had popular success in the 1960s.
Great technique is required to seamlessly segue from classical themes to jazz, and works including J.S. Bach’s “Prelude in C Minor” and Faure’s “Pavane” were smoothly developed into swinging jazz improvising, with Hughes executing the transformation quite brilliantly.
There was plenty of brilliant playing, too, from Roy Adams’ funky band. He is a powerful, and tremendously accurate, drummer. His band - including the excellent Chris “Beebe” Aldridge on tenor saxophone and Lichfield-based Steve Cooper on guitar - presented muscular versions of jazz-rock classics including “The Chicken”, plus pianist Chick Corea’s flamenco-influenced classic composition “Spain”, and trumpeter Miles Davis’s “So What”, the latter developed through clever re-phrasing into a deeply funky groove.
Another highlight was the tune “Revelation” by American band The Yellowjackets, with very fine soloing from saxophonist Aldridge. And blues-rock singer and guitarist Aynsley Lister and his band appeared at the Guildhall, fulfilling the festival’s promise to get groovy with the blues.
