Verdict: Four stars
Quercus, Queen's Hall Edinburgh,
Contrary to her sometimes rather severe demeanour, June Tabor does like a witticism. Introducing the Harry Warren-Mack Gordon standard.
This is Always as the interval approached, Tabor recalled an exasperated audience member in Penzance shouting, "Don't you know any songs about love gone right?" To which Tabor deadpanned, "Yes, we do and this is it."
The concert had actually begun with another happy ending, as it were, in Brigg Fair, from the English tradition, but that chap down in Penzance might have had a point. Tabor thrives in darkness and specialises in finding very often starkly affecting beauty in stories where optimism is in short supply and where far too many soldiers on the western front won't grow to be old.
In Quercus she has fellow musicians who are masters at setting her singing in the most glorious light. Possibly only Tabor could sing the songs already mentioned plus Tom Jobim's How Insensitive and Bob Dylan's Don't Think Twice It's Alright, the latter delivered with superb, shrug of the shoulders disinterest, and make them sound as if they have the same root.
Much of this has to do with Tabor's own marvellously honed phrasing but pianist Huw Warren and saxophonist Iain Ballamy's insightful mini-orchestrations add crucially to the cool, clear power of the songs. Ballamy, on tenor, has the knack of picking up on a motif - or on Jim Boyes' Tyne Cot at Night, just two notes - that can enhance a mood of solemnity, yet on his own Strawberries, he and Warren were playful conspirators and on Warren's lovely Dylan Thomas-inspired Fernhill they created almost carefree pastoral jazz of a very high order.
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