Carmen Lundy dazzles at Ronnie Scott’s with commanding EFG London Jazz Festival show
Peter Jones
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
The top-drawer American singer was on stunning form for her London show that had the audience in the palm of her hand
Anyone who has ever attempted to sing jazz should immediately seek out the nearest Carmen Lundy gig and obtain a ticket – by any means necessary.
It isn’t only the top-drawer songwriting. It isn’t even only the singing – although the singing is out of this world – it’s the way she conducts the band, the way she conducts herself, the way she addresses the audience.
Let’s start with the songwriting. Lundy’s compositional style is difficult to categorise. Let’s just call it light, modern, airy, hip. The tunes are heavily syncopated and elastic in feel. Take the second number from tonight’s performance, ‘The Island, The Sea, and You’, a languorous samba that Lundy wrote on guitar in Hawaii because there was no piano available. It’s taken from her 2017 Code Noir album, and the opening lyrics are “So warm, so cool, so calm, so smooth…” Which sums it all up.
She was aided no end by her band – the great Daryl Hall on bass, Terreon Gully on drums, but most of all, guitarist Andrew Renfroe, whose pellucid style was seemingly invented for the sole purpose of playing this material. On piano was our very own Trevor Watkiss, once a Londoner, now domiciled in New York. He flew back to play this gig due to the last-minute unavailability of Lundy’s regular pianist, and slipped into the role like a knife through butter.
Throughout, Lundy had the audience in the palm of her hand. She achieved this by the simple technique of being friendly and likeable, and not talking too much between tunes. Occasionally she did it by singing very quietly. This was not a noisy audience, but they were hushed into pin-drop mode by Lundy’s delicate control of light and shade. On ‘Daybreak’ from her album Soul to Soul, she directed the band through the syncopations, emphasising the hits with subtle movements of her hands and body. And on the sublime ‘Jazz on TV’, she demonstrated her Joni Mitchell-level vocal range with lyrics we can all relate to: “Staying up till a quarter to three, looking for jazz on TV”. Good luck with that!
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See more EFG London Jazz Festival gigs at Ronnie Scott’s this week by visiting efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk
