Paul Edis Trio + Roly Veitch at The Cherry Tree.

Roly Veitch – guitar and vocals; Paul Edis – piano and flute; Mick Shoulder – bass and Adam Sinclair – drums.

Take Paul’s trio, add Roly’s guitar and vocals and what do you get? Musically the most varied (and arguably the most successful) programme I've yet seen at The Cherry Tree. There was something for everybody: standards, bossa nova and twelve-bar blues. The musicians really seemed to gel and to get a kick out of playing together creating wonderful combinations of sound - flute and guitar on the bossa nova, Meditation; piano and bass on Emily and piano and guitar on Just One of Those Things.
It was delightful.
      The roll-call of composers and lyricists was impressive too, featuring Rodgers and Hart, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin and George Gershwin whose beautiful Ah loves you Porgy was, for me, the high-point of the evening.
      The first set opened with the trio playing a request, Satin Doll,  Roly crooned away our “cares and woes” with Just You, Just Me and Bye, Bye Blackbird. Paul gave his flute an airing on the aforementioned Meditation and Mick was to the fore in Emily. 
Paul’s arrangement (Bill Evans influenced?) of  Singin’ in the Rain is one  that I would dearly love to hear in a quieter atmosphere as, by this time, main courses were in full swing. My Funny Valentine was next up and the set closed with more fine vocals from Roly on that optimists’ anthem, Wrap your Troubles in Dreams.

In the second set we were treated to Yesterdays, Say it Isn’t so” (another good solo from Mick), the Gershwin love song (Porgy) and Johnny Mercer’s Harlem Butterfly. Roly said "We could only guess at where Paul got his title for Big Jug Blues from" (a pub on Claypath, Durham City, Roly, actually!) but the number drew warm applause anyway. Just One of those Things completed the evening apart from an encore which I missed while paying the bill!

The food normally gets equal billing with the music in these reviews so my apologies for the brevity of what follows: it was, as ever, excellent and, between four of us we sampled a good cross section of the menu. If you’ve never been yet, why not? - Photos.
Jerry.