Glasgow Jazz Festival

Ruby Turner

Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow

Keith Bruce

***

YOUNG Latvian graduate of the Riga Gospel Choir, Kristine Praulina, had best keep the talented chaps in her Soulful Crew – pianist Toms Mikals, guitarist Janis Kalnins, bassist Valters Sprudzs and drummer Kaspars Kurdek – on a tight rein. Because older soul and blues singers, like Ruby Turner, might well fancy poaching them on the strength of the playing they demonstrated in the City Halls Recital Room on Saturday afternoon. The diminutive Ms Praulina herself has a remarkable voice, with shades of both Billie Holiday and Macy Gray, and her song-writing is worth attention as well.

Downstairs in the evening, Ruby Turner still had the larger lungs, however, and an audience to match, while her eye for young instrumental talent was evident in the recent addition of bassist Damian Green, who also added fine backing vocals in his second appearance with her band, completed by guitarist Nick Marland, Peter Daley on keyboards and Simon Moore on drums.

Turner, giving herself free rein away from her regular billet with the Jools Holland Rhythm & Blues Orchestra, was celebrating her 61st birthday and in expansive, if occasionally somewhat maudlin, mood, whatever jet lag she was suffering after her recent return from New York City. Most of that capacity crowd were probably not there to hear the songs “from the new project I’m working on”, but That’s My Desire and Blow Top Blues, recently released on an EP and deriving from a Bristol Old Vic production of A Streetcar Named Desire, were well worth their rediscovery.

The showstoppers, on the other hand, were often too theatrical for their own good. Stay With Me Baby, self-deprecatingly introduced as the last time she troubled the UK charts, when it soundtracked a Lynda La Plante TV series, was as far over-the-top as the vaulted ceiling of the venue could accommodate. And while it was impressive how stilled the house remained for her extended, sobbed, I’d Rather Go Blind, I think Etta James herself would have found its excesses wearing.