Edinburgh Jazz Festival had better watch out: René Marie writes songs from experience.
The Roanoke dynamo began by singing of how being on stage makes the rigours of the road bearable and then celebrated the club owner who told her to just stand still and sing jazz standards like everybody else.
So, stand by for lyrical memories of the night she couldn’t hear herself think on stage for the powerhouse blues band in a neighbouring tent and of how she left her fabulous pianist Kevin Bales soloing indefinitely while she took care of a rogue stage door by securing it from the outside and re-entered through the auditorium to pick up her cue and resume seamlessly. If she wanted to add, although it’s not her style, that she was unbelievably good all the same, she’d be perfectly justified.
Like the trouper she obviously is, Marie made no concessions to the distractions. With the exception of one spontaneously delivered request, a superbly personal take on Duke Ellington’s Just Squeeze Me, she played the programme she intended. How she and bassist Kevin Hamilton found their key for their opening duet and how she kept Old Devil Moon faultlessly on course with just Quintin Baxter’s drums for company was miraculous.But then, miracles are what Marie does. Whether she was turning Dobie Gray’s old hit Drift Away into a church-going ballad, negotiating I Like You’s tongue-twisting extended phrases like a champion hurdler or singing from way deep down in her soul in Spanish, this was standard-setting brilliance. Again. Maybe next time she’ll get to play the Queen’s Hall – she deserves to fill it.
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