Paul Edis & Jo Harrop — A Jazzy Xmas Late Night Jazz @ the Elgar Room, Royal Albert Hall Dec. 18

Paul Edis (piano); Jo Harrop (vocals); Freddie Gavita (trumpet); Rory Ingham (trombone); Vasilis Xenopolis, Alex Garnett (saxophones); Gareth Lockrane (flutes, piccolo); Johanna Bernhardt (violin); Matyas Hofecker (bass); Matt Home (drums)

Seasonal jazz can so easily tip into the dutiful, but A Jazzy Xmas — staged at the Royal Albert Hall as part of its Late Night Jazz series in the Elgar Room — felt anything but routine. Intimate, warmly conversational and smartly arranged, this was Christmas music handled with care rather than tinsel.

At the centre was pianist and musical director Paul Edis, whose curatorial instincts are as sharp as his touch. His reworking of Santa Claus Is Coming to Town nodded knowingly to Bill Evans — specifically the trio language Evans explored on Trio ’64 — reframing a ubiquitous tune with poise and harmonic wit. It was affectionate without being reverential, a lesson in how to modernise the familiar without sanding off its charm.

Vocal duties were led by Jo Harrop, whose presence anchored the evening with understated authority. Her rendition of River by Joni Mitchell was the night’s emotional fulcrum. Introduced simply, it carried particular resonance: Harrop’s most recent album, Path of a Tear, was produced by Larry Klein, Mitchell’s longtime collaborator and former husband. That lineage lent the performance extra gravity, Harrop delivering the song with restraint and a quietly devastating clarity.

The programme was deft in its shifts of mood. Donny Hathaway’s This Christmas brought a deep, soulful swing, the band leaning into its soulful warmth without excess. Elsewhere, an instrumental Driving Home for Christmas struck a particularly poignant note — perhaps because many in the room had braved London traffic to be there. Stripped of lyrics, the tune became reflective rather than nostalgic, a shared exhale in the Elgar Room’s late-night hush.

Festive exuberance arrived with Edis’s solo performance of Feliz Navidad, the vocal started as a gentle invitation and ended as a full-throated sing-along, the audience’s confidence growing bar by bar until participation became its mainstay. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, written by Johnny Marks, was recast as a playful rumba, while other seasonal staples were filtered through various genre, and Edis’s arrangements were received with rapturous applause. Their delivery festive without ever becoming frenetic, a testament to the quality of the musicianship.

Edis’s arrangements consistently trusted melody first and swing second, allowing the ensemble to colour, rather than crowd the songs. Brass added warmth; the rhythm section kept things buoyant and elastic, Joanna Bernhardt (violin) added a layer that was effortlessly lyrical, swinging, and conversational—a rare blend of classical finesse and jazz spontaneity. The Elgar Room’s closeness did the rest, dissolving the boundary between stage and seats.

Winter Love Affair (One Day Soon) saw a delivery from Harrop and Edis that was quietly mesmerising. Self-penned, understated and taken from their award winning album When Winter Turns To Spring it unfolds with a slow-burn intimacy, Harrop’s voice wrapped in restraint and emotional control, while Edis' accompaniment leaves just enough space for the lyric to breathe. Nothing is overstated; the power lies in what’s held back. The sense of shared understanding between the two is unmistakable, each phrase gently leaning into the other, creating a mood that feels suspended in time.

That same intuitive connection carries through Have Yourself a Merry little Christmas, where Harrop and Edis do what they do best: stripping away sentimentality in favour of nuance and truth. This isn’t festive gloss but emotional realism, delivered with poise and mutual trust. When two artists listen this closely, tension builds not through volume or drama, but through restraint—and in the room, it becomes almost palpable

This performance will reach a wider audience when it is broadcast on Jazz FM on Christmas Eve at 7:00pm where it should sit comfortably among the station’s seasonal highlights. Heard live, though, A Jazzy Xmas felt less like a concert than a shared ritual — stylish, sincere and quietly joyful.

In a city saturated with Christmas noise, Paul Edis and Jo Harrop offered something rarer: festive jazz that trusted the music, respected the audience, and let the season speak in its own time. Glenn Wright