El Festival de Jazz de Canarias 2008 ended last Sunday. I had bought tickets for Spyro Gyra, The Crusaders and Madeleine Peyroux.

Spyro Gyra concert was OK. The show was correct, a good one but their music is definitively not my type of music. I used to like Spyro Gyra years ago but soon they turned musically boring to me. If I close my eyes and listen to them, -I don’t know why-I feel, I’m at the Love Boat swimming pool and this guy



is offering me a drink.

Last Saturday, The Crusaders’ turn. Folks the way Wilton Felder plays his sax is superb! I also liked very much the band as a whole. At first, the show was giving us “good vibrations” regarding what anyone would expect from a jazz concert: The Crusaders were performing a very nice show when, after 25/30 minutes, Joe Sample addressed the audience and told us: “Folks, our trombonist, Nils Landgren, has also his own band, The Funk Unit, and for the first time, we are going to play together”. Suddenly we had one more saxophonist and one more trumpet on stage. A couple of great tracks came and went and then, on the fly, The Crusaders stood up, left the stage and left us –alone in tears- with The Funk Unit for nearly an hour. The Crusaders stepped back into the stage for a few more tracks but I was fed up after being smashed by a funk music endless hour. I just wanted to leave the hall, asap. I did pay to listen a jazz concert, not a funk one!

After these deceptions, I still had one ticket left for Sunday, the last concert of the Festival. Even when going out on Sunday evening, is something I don’t really like much, I thought I had to go. So I did. Madeleine Peyroux live.

I had never heard about this girl before, either about her music. She was born in Athens, Georgia, USA. What I knew for sure was the same I was confidence about when I bought the tickets for the Crusaders show: I was going to a jazz concert!

We reached the hall right around 21.00 hours, we found a nice place to park and soon we were sat in our seats. We had a perfect sight of the stage. Better than the one we had with the Crusaders, the night before. Row 8, seat 12

As it was the last show of the Festival, one of the promoters –you know how promoters are- came into the stage and addressed the audience with the usual stuff in these cases: “thank you very much for supporting, bla, bla, bla, thank you to the public institutions that, bla, bla, apologise mistakes, bla, bla, bla, and after two or three more bla, bla, bla, told us: “¡Con todos ustedes, Madeleine Peyroux!”

Madeleine stepped into the stage with her band, grabbed her Martin guitar, while the rest of the members took their places and the concert started off.

The Georgia born singer caught me from the very first track she sung. It was a pleasant premonition of the exquisite piece of beauty we had the chance to enjoy. The volume of her Martin guitar……perfect!

Madeleine soon introduced us her band mates: Darren Becket on drums –who was wearing a suit and a tie-, Julian Coryell on guitar, Barak Mori on contrabass and James Beard on piano and keyboard.

A-ma-zing!

We listened Dixieland and we listened blues and we were lucky enough, to listen beautiful, superb, delicate versions of world famous tracks, like Harry Nilson's “Everybody is talking”, a song that Madeliene turned absolutely upside down, by changing its rhythmic, harmonic and vocal structure, developing a totally brand new precious piece of beauty, so far away from the original tune, folks, that took us several minutes to identify the particular track she was singing. The audience clapped and cheered furiously.

Madeleine comfortably sang and played guitar at the same time. She modulated her voice with accuracy and was able to change her tone easily, showing an outstanding vocal and tonal versatility. I felt in love with her singing. So warm, so sweet, so soulful. Sometimes it seemed I was listening to Billie Holliday, sometimes it seemed Sara Vaughan was the singer. On occasions deep, powerful jazzy tones for songs she sung in French, that took me back in time, to the after-World War I years, when Paris was some sort of Jazz Paradise, crowded with US people. On occasions, tracks only performed by Madeleine and her contrabass man, loaded the hall with a warm, thick delicious and intimate atmosphere of passion, of a pure and non adulterer lyricism, that turned what it was supposed to be just a good concert, into a sublime spectacle with a delicate bouquet.

Julian Coryell…….what an exquisite guitar player! His Gibson ES175 was simply a beauty. As soon as he strummed the strings……. I got shocked in my seat. That guitar delivered, not any tone, but “The Tone". The one I like from an axe. Amp was not at sight and I guess that, apart from a volume/delay pedal, he didn’t use any other fx’s. Contrary than the Crusaders guitar player, Coryell was –most of the time-soloing on the lowest range strings, filling up the hall with that thick, creamy, fat tone that only an axe like that is able to deliver. Coryell displayed also a superb technique, showing a delicious, colorful, bright and fresh playing that delighted us.

The rhythmical section was outstanding. There was “chemist” between them. Drummer, Darren Becket, seemed extracted from a comic book, with his blue suit and tie but, folks, he offered an original technique, rich in expression, sensibility and details, but no boast, no stridency, I mean, no playing tricks to freely amaze the audience. Contrabass man, equally shared same playing characteristics and gave the audience the best example of that simplicity turned into beauty, that Madeleine Peyroux and her band deliver in their shows. Barak Mori executed the most simple, non adorned and austere contrabass solo I had ever listened to, but at the same time, one of the most delicate, deep and soulful I’ve ever heard.

James Beard on piano……….¡excellent! All members did several solos during the show, but Beard was the one who had more occasions to do it and for sure it was worth. On the stage, there was a Steinway and Sons and an organ, that sounded like one of those old Hammonds. Beard received the warmest clapping at the end of the show, because, obviously, he had a very important role, regarding that wonderful atmosphere that Madeleine and her band mates achieve in their shows. Sometimes Beard reminded me the surrounding, vanishing, tenuous Lyle Mays’ -Pat Metheny’s pianist for years- piano sound. Equal than the rest of his band mates, his exquisite simplicity and sensibility while playing was remarkable, attacking with tons of expressivity the different tracks they performed. The audience felt in love deeply with him. By the way the sonority of the Steinway……………….was not from this world, folks!

The show went on with one great track after another, ‘till we reached the end of it after nearly two hours.

The audience in the hall remained in state of shock. Madeleine Peyroux had made some people to stand up during the concert, but at the end, before she came back out for an encore, Alfredo Kraus Auditory collapsed, whole audience stood up furiously clapping, yelling bravo and thanking Madeleine so much for what she has given us that night.

What an extraordinary sensation when I left the Auditory!

The truth is that we had some rumors in town, regarding the not so high level profile of the bands we had this year performing in our Jazz Festival. I told to a close friend, who has seen most of the shows, “I guess, only two women have saved the Festival for us, don’t you think so?” He looked at me and said: "No doubt about it, man! Esperanza Spalding and Madeleine Peyroux!

Saludos

love her.

I never heard of her but will check her music out.

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"Feminism has fought no wars.
It has killed no opponents.
It has set up no concentration camps,
starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties.
Its battles have been for education, for the vote,
for better working conditions ...
for safety on the streets, for child care,
for rape crisis clinics, women's refuges, reforms in the laws.
If someone says, "Oh, I'm not a feminist!", I ask,
"Why? What's your problem?" - Dale Spender

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She is often featured on the play list of one of my local radio stations. This one is predominantly current affairs and talk but it mixes in music. I remember the drive bloke playing one of her tracks and he remarked that it seemed difficult to believe that she was a contemporary singer and not from the 1940s or even the 1950s. They particularly like to play "Dance Me to the End of Love".