Glasgow Jazz Festival

David McAlmont presents Billie Holiday at Carnegie Hall

St Luke’s, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

*****

THE OPENING event of this year’s Glasgow Jazz Festival encapsulated exactly why it is such an essential part of the city’s cultural calendar 33 years after its inception.

Attracting a packed and diverse crowd to the venue that has established itself as the successor to the Old Fruitmarket, on the evening before the first concert there, singer David McAlmont re-contextualised the “tragic” tale of Lady Day, who died 60 years ago, by performing a joyous celebration of her music with a band that - by the by - reflected the goal of a 50/50 gender balance at festivals towards which Jill Rodger’s event has blazed a trail.

The Performing Rights Society, which is behind that “Key Change” initiative, was, incidentally, name-checked by McAlmont late on in the show, with an anecdote about the significance of its quarterly payments to musicians illustrating the poor remuneration Billie Holiday received for her classic recordings.

That was indicative of his approach, finding parallels between Holiday’s life and his own in a spoken-word component of the evening that stayed focused when it seemed in danger of waffle, and in which the scripted component was sincere and poetic.

With the November 1956 Carnegie Hall concert of the title another element of that framework, the music itself showed his love for, and debt to, Holiday’s back catalogue, without being any sort of impersonation.

And what a repertoire it is for a singer of the capabilities of McAlmont. George Melly - who had very little voice at all - would have given his eye teeth to be able to deliver a Billie’s Blues like this one, and the second half sequence of Loverman, I Cried For You and Don’t Explain was a masterclass in jazz vocals. A stripped-back duo encore of God Bless The Child, to which musical director added his own original piano riff, recast the song for contemporary ears.

Over the rest of the two sets, McAlmont was superbly accompanied by a trio completed by Flo Moore on bass and Sophie Alloway on drums, and a front line of saxophonist Denys Baptiste and trumpeter Sue Richardson, the latter often the crucial foil to the singer in Webb’s fine arrangements.