Music
Seonaid Aitken
RSNO Centre, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
Keith Bruce
four stars
THE SCOTTISH Session Orchestra, which can be heard on the soundtrack of David Mackenzie’s film Outlaw King as well as on the debut album by jazz singer and violinist Seonaid Aitken, What Is This Thing Called Love? – launched on Valentine’s Day in the room in which it was recorded – is a very interesting development on the music scene.
Unlike other irregularly-convened “scratch” bands, this one gathers the cream of the orchestral musicians working in Scotland, so that, for example, the BBC SSO’s leader Laura Samuel features on the album, while the RSNO’s, Maya Iwabuchi, was first violin for the concert, with GRIT orchestra supremo Greg Lawson at the front of the second fiddles.
It was a platform that the star of the show obviously appreciated, and was careful to share, with conductor Adam Robinson, guest guitarist Joe Williamson and the string players. Her voice and fiddle were placed at the centre of the mix, rather than on top, and her arrangements made the most of her resources, whether with the nod to Vaughan Williams from Iwabuchi at the start of Skylark, the quartet of cellos on I’ll Never Be The Same, the massed pizzicato strings on Embraceable You, or her very effective tango take on The Man I Love. Making standards sound fresh is a tricky task, but Aitken succeeds even on Christine McVie’s seriously over-exposed Songbird, and only her Bach-referencing transcription of Nina Simone’s Love Me Or Leave Me (not on the album) felt a little too obvious.
A confident stage presence, the multi-talented Aitken declines to be pigeon-holed, and that, as much as her choice of material, may dictate the age profile of her audience – lots of couples here, but perhaps few first dates. Once she would have been a staple on the sort of variety telly that is not made anymore, and Gus Macdonald would have given her an hour-long special on STV. In the 21st century she will have to create her own context in which to sparkle, and this was a very fine start.
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