Ballads Before Bedtime - May 5

Paul Edis is keeping himself busy compiling set lists in readiness for his regular lockdown sessions, all the while thinking of how best to present an abundance of material. On Tuesday evening at the late night hour of ten o'clock pianist Edis made a brief introduction...he would play six ballads without further commentary, then lights out.

Are you sitting comfortably? No! Not that comfortably. You! You on the sofa, you're nodding off, sit up straight! Hoagy's The (Virtual) Nearness of You, Gershwin's I've Got a Crush on You, our London lockdown performer kept to his word, that is he didn't say a word although an occasional glance at an adjacent screen couldn't be resisted - yes, there was a late night audience out there in Lockdown Land!

Vernon Duke's I Can't Get Started (choose your favourite vocalist/instrumentalist to 'accompany", at least in your head, this evening's lockdown performer), Ray Noble's The Very Thought of You (if it had been Cherokee taken at a lick that would have woken the slumbering audience!), Danny Boy (comp. Frederic Weatherly)* then You Must Believe in Spring. Composer Michel Legrand couldn't have imagined such a glorious yet weird spring!

And that was it, six numbers expertly played by our London resident pianist. If this review has omitted any tunes the explanation is a) nodding off, hastening to add due to the affects of a third - or was it a fourth? - bottle of Old Peculier, b) a quick visit to the loo thanks to the affects of Old Peculier, c) routine incompetence. 

* Thanks to an internet search engine for revealing the name of the composer. Question: Why is it that, from time to time, jazz musicians perform this least likely of 'jazz' numbers? 

Russell