Zoe Gilby@ The Cherry Tree. Monday June 4.

Zoe Gilby (vocals), Andy Champion (double bass), Mark Williams (guitar),  Adrian Tilbrook (drums)

 (Review by JC)

As the flyer for the Cherry Tree says ‘Monday Night is Jazz night’ and this session is now well established as a place to eat great food and hear very good jazz. The audience seems to have settled down over the years and is now mostly made up of couples, young and old and small groups of four and five, and they are ready to listen. This makes it a great place to hear jazz when there is a group as good as this on.

One of the great things about the jazz scene in the North East is that all the musicians seem to know each other so that band membership can shift almost imperceptibly, particularly on Monday nights, which means that sometimes the compiler of the Cherry Tree flyer struggles to keep up. One night the whole rhythm section was different to that billed but nobody noticed and the gig was fine. This time, while they did get to mention that for this gig, Adrian Tilbrook was on drums, some guy named Bert was also billed but didn’t show (which was probably just as well).

Anyway, Zoe and the band performed two excellent and diverse sets which drew on the range of her musical influences, and while she introduced some songs as from the Great American Songbook, this seems a quite limiting categorisation when you hear what she does with Love for Sale, I Only Have Eyes For You and her medley of I'm Beginning to See the Light / When Lights Are Low, (and the phrase is probably past its sell-by date for political reasons as well).

Zoe performed three of her own and Andy’s compositions, which seem to get better and better with repeated hearings. How many songs these days use the words ‘objet d’art’ as a rhyme and make more references to the ‘working class’ than John Lennon? – Midnight Bell - as well as being musically very interesting.

One of the stand out songs was Nature Boy, which Zoe rightly described as having a ‘magical’ quality, with its immediately arresting first line ‘There was a boy, a strange enchanted boy...who wandered very far, very far away’. There was some lovely guitar playing from Mark on this and the crystal like quality of his notes was as clear and transparent as the cool glass of tap water I happened to be drinking at the time.

I have always been disappointed to miss the gigs where Andy and Zoe perform as a bass and vocal duo, as the couple of songs I have heard them do (and the ones I have seen on YouTube) are very impressive. The performance here of Way Down in the Hole was no exception with Andy soloing at full speed. Zoe told a nice story about being encouraged by Sheila Jordan to play as a duo and how right she was. When will there be more of these gigs, please?

 The final number of the set was Caravan and Adrian seemed to be seeking some advice from the band as to how he should approach the song. The answer sounded something like ‘Play it tappy tappy, man’ – dangerous advice to give to a drummer recently nicknamed ‘the Beast’ by a visiting US piano player. In the end he only mildly monstered the drum kit, but even so this was much appreciated by the audience. Maybe he was just celebrating the Government’s u-turn on charging VAT on caravan sites.

An encore was duly demanded and the band obliged with Centrepiece, which Zoe warned us might get a bit ‘silly’. Not at all...this was blast with Zoe appearing to do some multi-tracked scatting live with the band powering on behind her. Zoe then chased Mark in scat up his guitar and he seemed to run out of guitar neck before she ran out of notes – great fun.

So just another ordinary Monday night at the Cherry Tree....

 Fashion Notes

As this is an equal opportunities blog, here is a brief review of the band’s sartorial style. Mark was seriously on trend with a subtle, dark striped shirt worn casually over designer jeans, possibly Armani, and he fully deserved Zoe’s description of him as her ‘glamorous assistant’ as he combined selling CDs off the back of the grand piano with effortless soloing on the guitar.

Andy’s short-sleeved shirt, either Ralph Lauren or Hilfiger, gave a nice summer touch and its soft gold colour contrasted well with the rich wood tones of the double bass. In the corner, Adrian sat quietly behind his drum kit in a nicely coordinated dark shirt and trousers, which hinted at the subtle menace in his playing.

And, oh yeah - great singer.

JC