Scottish Ensemble, Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow
Michael Tumelty
Four stars
THE loveliest night of the year, perhaps? You know, generally I would avoid like the plague being seen to presume what other people might think or like. Dangerous territory, when all of our responses to music are so individual and so different. But just this once, at the risk of abrading sensitive musical palates, dare I suggest that Jonathan Morton's creative choice to make the theme of the closing concert for his Scottish Ensemble season An American Songbook, with classics from the great popular repertoire of the last century, from Gershwin to Mancini, was absolutely on the pulse of what his audience wanted on Saturday night. He hit the nail right on the head, and the crowd loved it.
It seemed to me that, as the Old Fruitmarket, dressed in its cabaret/café livery and flooded with a darkly-lit ambience, while its floor became steadily-packed with dancing couples, strictly old-style, and the strings of the Scottish Ensemble filled the place with the sound of all this fabulous, ageless music, I have not seen so many smiling faces in a long time, nor felt such warmth emanating from a crowd: powerful, affecting stuff, music. The atmosphere was intoxicating, and electric when a couple of tango dancers took the floor. All the music was lovely; and so was the night.
With just the ensemble strings, James Gorman on kit, Anna-Jane Casey a richly-authentic voice (Blossom Dearie being among her favourites) and, underpinning, and indeed characterising, the whole programme, Jamie Manson's glorious and consistently stylish arrangements (he played bass throughout) all you could do was smile, laugh, cry; or dance: cheek to cheek.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article