 |
| © Monika S. Jakubowska |
There’s a moment in every artist’s life when they move on
and up. From a club to a hall, and for some a stadium. Financially it makes
perfect sense… but artistically, something can get lost in the translation. And
it’s not until they return to the type of space that first defined them that
you realise what’s been missing.
Nights like this.
There was a sense of anticipation as we approached Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, the queue stretching right up to The Dog and Duck—not the usual split between members and general admission, not the quiet slipping in for an early seat and a drink. Just one line. One shared purpose. And the fact this sat alongside three other shows that had vanished in minutes during the members’ pre-sale told you everything. This was an internationally acclaimed artist capable of selling out thousands of seats across multiple dates… choosing instead to stand in front of just 250 people in the type of space that first made audiences fall in love with her.
Even before a note was played, there was that familiar, almost ceremonial hush. The gentle request to silence phones, no filming, no distractions—protect the moment. A reminder that what happens in this room is meant to be lived, not captured. And in that, something shifted immediately. Attention sharpened. The room became part of the performance before it had even begun.
Opening with Mother by Pink Floyd, was a statement of intent. In its original form, it’s a conversation—a child reaching out, a mother responding—but responding through the lens of her own fears, her own anxieties, projecting them outward in a way that shapes and contains. Here, stripped back and re-centred, that dialogue felt uncomfortably current. In an age where children aren’t just guided by those closest to them but are constantly exposed through social media—to opinion, to pressure, to a world that rarely pauses—the idea of inherited fear, of absorbed anxiety, takes on a different weight. The questions in the lyric didn’t just hang in the air… they lingered. And you could feel the type of space recalibrate around them.
Threaded beneath it all was the drum—steady, hypnotic,
almost heartbeat-like in its constancy. Tamir Barzilay never forced the rhythm
forward, he simply let it pulse underneath the song, grounding all of that
tension and unease. Above it, Chris Seefried’s guitar seemed to drift and curl around
the vocal rather than accompany it conventionally, adding shadows and
atmosphere more than notes. Together they gave the piece that slow-building
sense of unease, perfectly matching the emotional weight hanging inside the
room.
And then, almost without warning, the tone shifted. Seefrieds guitar swirling until Flaugher picks up the mantle and drives the next song forward.
Drawing from Blackbird—a piece she’s spoken about recently, one she’s been reshaping and reclaiming—she stepped into something far more visual, far more symbolic. Dressed in chain mail, a headset catching the low light, a skirt that moved with her rather than against her, and those unmistakable black wings framing her silhouette, she didn’t just sing the next piece… she embodied it.
The lyric fragments—“you ain’t never gonna fly… no place big enough for holding… they call you little sorrow”—landed like echoes of that earlier conversation in Mother, but now turned inward. Not the voice of protection, but of limitation. Of being told what you are, and more importantly, what you are not.
And yet, in her delivery, there was resistance. A quiet defiance. The repetition didn’t confine—it built. Each line circling back, pushing further, until what began as something restrictive started to feel like release. The imagery, the movement, the phrasing… it became a journey. Not just through the song, but through identity, expectation, and ultimately, self-definition.
You weren’t watching a performance at that point. You were inside it.
And that’s the thing with her. She doesn’t perform at you. She draws you in until you’re part of it.
The voice—raw, powerful and completely unforced—sat right in the centre of the room. No hiding place, no need for one. Just that slow, deliberate phrasing that makes time feel elastic. Around her, the band moved with that instinctive understanding—space where it mattered, weight where it counted. Nothing overplayed. Everything placed.
There were no grandstanding solos. They simply didn’t need them. The whole performance lived in that space of restraint—understated, deliberate, and all the more powerful for it.
Chris Seefried moved effortlessly between electric and acoustic guitar, and then across to the piano, never drawing attention to the shift, just quietly reshaping the sound as the set unfolded. Behind it all, Johnny Flaugher held everything together on bass, not pushing, not pulling—just that steady, assured presence that let the songs breathe exactly as they needed to.
On drums, Tamir Barzilay brought that same quiet authority—no flash, no overreach—just a steady, intuitive pulse that anchored everything without ever stepping into the spotlight. The kind of playing you almost forget is there until you realise the entire performance is leaning on it.
The sound, as a whole, was outstanding. Not because it was loud or complex, but because it knew exactly what it was trying to be—and never once overreached.
There were moments where the set blurred between structured performance and something looser, more conversational. You felt that in the way she spoke to the audience—warm, slightly unfiltered, human. A genuine “it’s been too long,” a thank you that didn’t feel rehearsed, a band introduction that wandered just enough to feel real. It drew you closer, not away.
She spoke about the tour—Acid Spiritual—and what sat behind it. Purification. Stripping back to who you are, not who you’ve been told to be. And suddenly the songs that followed made even more sense.
They were all here, the songs the audience hoped to hear, stripped back and laid bare.
Man on a Boat didn’t arrive as a song so much as a release. That idea of washing clean, of letting go, of stepping into something freer—it all sat in the phrasing, in the way the band allowed it to expand without ever losing shape. With Chris Seefried on acoustic guitar and Johnny Flaugher on bass, the song moved effortlessly between genres, jazz and folk, never feeling tied completely to either, instead drifting somewhere beautifully in between. You could feel the current underneath it.
New material slipped in almost unnoticed. Songs about losing something good, about knowing when to walk away even when it hurts. Good Thing carried that quiet ache—“don’t call me darling”—delivered not as drama, but as acceptance. Honest, unguarded, still finding its final shape, and stronger for it.
They slipped into It Must Be Love—that familiar melody, forever tied to Madness—but here it was gently unpicked, reimagined, and laid bare, feeling closer in spirit to the intimacy of Labi Siffre’s original version than the joyous bounce most people associate with it. What is often delivered with a knowing smile was instead given space to breathe, revealing something more tender underneath.
Their voices didn’t compete, they recognised each other. Harrop’s understated warmth meeting Lady Blackbird’s raw, searching tone, the two circling the lyric rather than leaning into it, allowing it to unfold naturally. It became less about the song itself and more about what sat between them—an unspoken understanding, a shared phrasing, a mutual respect for restraint.
Dressed in white, Jo Harrop carried echoes of her own debut appearance in the main room at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club—that same understated elegance, that same ability to quieten a space without ever forcing it. But this felt different somehow. More assured, more settled in herself. And judging by the reaction around the room, she will undoubtedly have left the evening with new followers drawn into her orbit after a performance of such restraint and emotional clarity.
And in that moment, the song itself became the bridge—It Must Be Love reinforcing a connection between the two artists that felt entirely natural, entirely unforced. Not nostalgia, not reinvention for effect… just two voices finding the same emotional centre and staying there long enough for the room to feel it.
Elsewhere, the set continued to reveal itself in layers. There was no rush to get anywhere, no sense of chasing a moment—just a quiet confidence in letting each song land fully before moving on.
Even the unexpected moments—the looseness, the humour, the band introductions that didn’t quite go to plan—felt part of it. Nothing polished for effect, everything grounded in presence. You weren’t watching a performance being delivered… you were inside something unfolding.
There was room too for surprise. Come Together arrived with a looseness and swagger that momentarily shifted the atmosphere entirely, before easing seamlessly into Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. Songs so familiar can often feel trapped by expectation, but here they became communal again—voices joining softly from the crowd, smiles exchanged between band members, the type of moment that only really works in a room this intimate.
It’ll Never Happen Again arrived late in the evening like a confession you weren’t quite meant to overhear. Stripped of anything unnecessary, it hung there—fragile, reflective—one of those pieces where the type of space instinctively understands its role. No movement, no interruption… just listening. And when it ended, there was that split second where nobody quite wanted to break it. Then the applause came—long, insistent, almost refusing to let the moment go.
They clapped her back. And then kept clapping.
When she returned, those opening bars of Fix It felt like a signal—we thought we knew where this was heading. A closing number settling into place, something familiar to carry us out. But just as the room leaned into that expectation, she pivoted. A shift, almost imperceptible at first, and suddenly we were somewhere else entirely.
Into I Am What I Am from La Cage aux Folles.
And it fit. Completely.
And then something happened that only certain voices can do in rooms like this. A song that in lesser hands could have drifted towards theatre suddenly became something far more intimate and human. With that beautiful voice—capable of stretching time, of hanging onto a phrase just long enough for it to ache—Lady Blackbird turned I Am What I Am into one of those rare shared moments that audiences don’t simply applaud… they carry with them. You could feel people almost unwilling for it to end, knowing instinctively they were inside something they would remember forever. The kind of silence between lines that only comes when a room stops thinking and simply feels.
A song chosen not as a showcase, nor as a theatrical flourish, but as a statement of who she is, what she stands for, and what this moment meant to her. The phrasing carried that same unforced honesty that had run through the entire set, but here it lifted—subtly, powerfully—into something closer to declaration. Not loud, not overstated… just certain.
In that moment, she didn’t feel like a visiting artist passing through one of London’s most iconic spaces. She felt rooted in it. Part of it. Another thread woven into the long, ever-evolving tapestry of Soho itself—where jazz, soul, theatre and story have always overlapped, collided, and somehow found a way to belong together.
And as the final notes settled, you realised this hadn’t been a set built on peaks and finales.
It was something rarer than that.
A journey that trusted Ronnie’s enough… to let it come with her. Glenn Wright
No comments :
Post a Comment