A big birthday but a few days away, Martin Taylor attracted a capacity audience to the rather grand venue of Bowes Museum. Situated a short walk from the centre of Barnard Castle, for the out-of-towner, sign posted or not, the country house was impossible to miss, no appointment at Specsavers required.
The space in which guitarist Martin Taylor would perform was, back in the day, perhaps a drawing room, the kind of place servants would bow and scrape. No such deference this evening, Taylor perhaps the one person on the premises dressed in a suit and tie. A master of fingerstyle guitar, a Fibonacci endorsee (similarly Nigel Price and Bireli Lagrene), Taylor would perform two spell-binding sets of solo guitar playing.
Don't Know Why (a big hit for Nora Jones), Girl Talk, a superlative Stella by Starlight, Taylor dropped into the conversation one or two 'names' - Sacha Distel (Taylor keen to impress upon his audience just how good a jazz guitarist the French heartthrob was), Peter Boizot (of Pizza Express fame), Joe Pass (the comparison was there for all to hear), Stéphane Grappelli, the 'names' kept on coming.
The Dolphin (a Brazilian bossa), Someday My Prince Will Come, breaking off to tell the story about bumping into Chet Atkins at an airport in Detroit (as one would do), a show-stopping exploration of Sweet Lorraine, Taylor certainly knows how to put on a show.
Laurie Holloway, Guy Barker, Tommy Emmanuel, Taylor the storyteller, Taylor the master guitarist (incorporating impossibly intricate basslines), two sets flew by, concluding with a magisterial I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free. Russell
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