Julia Biel Brings Magic Realism To Pizza Express
Friday, September 1, 2006
Last night at Pizza Express Jazz Club in London, Julia Biel started her set with an a cappella intro into 'History', the final song from her album Not Alone. Her lone voice filled the room with an emotional tension that swamped the patrons of the cellar club. It came as quite a release, then, when Biel’s band struck up their fluttering accompaniment. Oriole’s Jonny Phillips on guitar, Polar Bear’s Sebastian Rochford on drums, Ben Davis on cello, Idris Rahman on woodwind and Jasper Høiby on double bass made for quite a band.
In the moments where Ben Davis’ cello smoothly sliced through the sound on 'Rhythm of the Treetops', or where Idris Rahman developed his clarinet at a key point in a series of instrumental sections for 'Souvenir', the band seemed to create its own musical version of magic realism in keeping with the writings of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But it was Biel’s voice that truly allowed the music to transport her listeners into another emotional place, sharing that tinge of tragedy that marks the vocal talents of Thom Yorke or Björk but without plumbing the depths of melancholy or abstraction they reach. Instead songs like 'Paradise', and “Sshhh,” as they wound their folk roots around Biel’s voice, projected a sense of joyous revelation to her audience. But is she a jazz singer with a folk edge, or a folk singer with jazz influences or something else entirely? It hardly matters when the the performance was as captivating as this. Review: Nick Spearing