Festival Music
Chilly Gonzales, The Hub
Keith Bruce
Four Stars
Canadian Jason Beck is a singular talent. Clad in his signature bathrobe as his alter ego Chilly Gonzales, he takes the Festival’s Steinway, and the capacity audience, on a musical tour that demands only regular acclaim and adulation. He is clearly delighted to have been promoted to Fergus Linehan’s programme – last time he was in Edinburgh he had been booked to play “the comedy festival”.
It was an understandable mistake, because Gonzo is very funny. His comedy comes through his fingers on the keys as well as his individual take on rapping. It is also in his deliberate mistakes, linked tracing the use of the string quartet in pop music to The Rolling Stones song Elizabeth Ridley, or quoting a line from “famous Scottish band” U2.
The quartet on stage at Hamburg’s Kaiser Quartett, resplendent in three-piece pin-stripe suits, and the ensemble is also bolstered by a hirsute young drummer with roots in Ipswich, who usefully doubles on flugelhorn. And when all of that is insufficient, Gonzo enlists the choral forces of the crowd, who inevitably prove tuneful and dynamic.
The music is articulate and beautifully arranged for the forces, and plunders classical chamber music, hiphop and show tunes with glee. When Gonzo condemns Richard Wagner as “the Kanye West of composers” you feel he has the authority for the slur, particularly as it is an excuse to praise Johannes Brahms.
And at long last the Festival has found a proper use for its home at the Hub. The temporary auditorium created for these Hub sessions is going to prove one of the most popular innovations of the 2015 event without a doubt.
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