Sanem Kalfa and George Dumitriu toast European jazz at Manchester Jazz Festival

Until, that is, the Centre’s exhibits quickly revealed the appropriateness of the celebrated author’s extensive musical interests and even more extensive relationship with Europe and the wider world.

First up the piano/tabla duo of Helen Anahita Wilson and Shahbaz Hussain took the complex rhythms and time signatures of South India and blended them, often in meditative style, with the nuances of Europe’s prime gift to music – the endlessly expressive and adaptable 88-note piano keyboard.

Vocalist Sanem Kalfa and viola/guitarist George Dumitriu (pictured top) led us into the second part of the evening in a similar gentle, almost meditative vein, as they emerged from the back of the venue and walked through the audience with a simple folk song. Expressive and theatrical – but never over the top or to the detriment of the music – Kalfa moved through an exquisitely varied and well-paced repertoire of originals and adapted songs in Turkish (her heritage), Romanian (George Dumitriu’s) and the universal English of their adopted Dutch nationality.

As the diversity of their backgrounds seemed a perfect metaphor for European diversity, so their musical approach also personified some of the best aspects of contemporary European jazz. Both Kalfa and Dumitriu used some electronic effects on voice and on guitar – but mercifully – and so commendably – avoiding the ubiquitous loop-obsession and using effects sparingly and with sublety just to accentuate elements of a lyric or an instrumental passage.

While recognising the value of these occasional touches of electronics and their prodigious skills and range as singer and instrumentalist, any concentration on such technicalities evaporated as the duo’s considerable impact on the audience was carried to us through sustained and skilfully modulated emotion. In every song, Sanem Kalfa seemed to be addressing each member of the audience personally, whether expressing anguish, joy, humour, light-heartedness, love or sadness - and George Dumitriu’s guitar and viola encapsulated and extended the sentiment with perfectly balanced musical empathy.

Although on their first-ever visit to the UK (via the Jazz Promotion Network’s Going Dutch scheme and the funding generosity of Dutch Performing Arts) the duo undoubtedly made the impact that festival director Steve Mead was aiming for by introducing as-yet unknown artists (unknown here, at least) and encouraging his audience to follow their curiosity and discover new musical delights. In this case, it’s a dead certainty that Kalfa and Dumitriu will not remain unknown to British audiences for much longer.

– Robert Beard