Bradley Creswick's Western Swingfonia @ LIVE Concerts at Home, King's Hall, Newcastle University - Feb. 3

Bradley Creswick (fiddle); Martin Hughes (fiddle); Archie Brown (guitar, vocals); Pat Rafferty (accordion, lap steel guitar, vocals); David Murray (piano); Chris Ringer (bass guitar)

Bradley Creswick's Western Swingfonia played to a capacity Jazz Co-op audience, that was in November last year. This afternoon it was somewhat different. Newcastle University's lunchtime concert series resumed with the musicians playing to an empty King's Hall (the institution clearly taking the view that until the pandemic is genuinely in retreat it's better to be safe than sorry). However, the online concert drew an audience in excess of eighty. Thirteen varied pieces in forty five minutes, Creswick and co did their best to make it a hoedown. 

A casually dressed Creswick (no Northern Sinfonia penguin suit for the orchestra's Leader Emeritus) did most of the talking, not to mention the fiddling with sparring partner Martin Hughes, Archie Brown did much of the singing and pianist David Murray did the bulk of the sight reading. Online comment (much of it from dragooned music students!) heaped praise upon the performers: Creswick's dazzling brilliance, Rafferty's earthy vocals, the breadth of the material. 

Jazz? Not really, Americana certainly, some 'series music' in the form of Béla Bartók. The closing two numbers - Vittorio Monti's Czárdás and the traditional Black Mountain Rag - stretched the musicians, not least the fiddlers, to the fullest extent. An enjoyable online session, it'll be good to return to King's Hall in person, although that's likely to be in the autumn, at the earliest. Russell     
    

Set list: Skylark; Steel Guitar Rag; Low Life; San Antoni Rose; Carmen's Boogie; Peor ed nada (better than nothing); Bartok duos for violin; Can't Get Used to It; Libertango; Horsehair Boogie; Take Me Back to Tulsa; Czardas; Black Mountain Rag.