Seonaid Aitken & Ben Shankland, Glasgow Jazz Festival review: 'a concert of two halves'
Trying to squeeze a nine-piece orchestra onto a small stage for the second half of this Glasgow Jazz Festival concert proved overly ambitious, writes David Kettle
Seonaid Aitken & Ben Shankland: Rhapsody in Blue – an Evening of Gershwin, Mackintosh Church, Glasgow ★★★
Ben Shankland and Seonaid Aitken clearly have feet firmly planted in both classical and jazz – he as a pianist and arranger, she as a singer, violinist and plenty more. So genre-hopping pioneer George Gershwin felt like an ideal subject for their ambitious Glasgow Jazz Festival evening – ably supported by bassist David Bowden, himself clearly no stranger to either musical style.
It proved, however, something of a concert of two halves. Before the interval, a collection of Gershwin songs drew unforced, quietly compelling performances from the trio. Shankland was sometimes so cool as to appear aloof, despite his deeply persuasive playing that ranged from cascading lyricism to percussive interjections, while Aitken swapped between crystalline, soaring vocals and equally nimble violin solos, with wit and insight from Bowden’s agile basslines. They Can’t Take That Away From Me was nonchalant and stylish, while Shankland set up a remarkable sequence of tensions and resolutions with almost clinical precision in Someone To Watch Over Me.
Things got more complicated in the bolder second half, however. Full marks for drafting in a nine-piece string orchestra – led ably by Aitken – as backing band, but the Mackintosh Church’s tiny stage left the string players almost entirely obscured by the grand piano, particularly unfortunate during a trio of Gershwin song arrangements where its stool sat empty.
Before that came an inventive and nicely conceived Porgy and Bess medley, all soaring Mantovani-style strings and chugging rhythms, and with an almost Bernard Herrmann-esque strangeness to its reimagining of Summertime.
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue exists in countless versions, but the concert’s piano-plus-nonet arrangement struggled to convey the piece’s energy, wit and bite, especially at the performance’s rather leisurely tempo, and Shankland’s earlier joyful freedom and insight felt more constrained in sticking to the letter of Gershwin’s score. It was buoyant, light-footed and beautifully translucent in its sounds, but after the effortless spontaneity of the first half’s songs, it felt a bit confined and controlled.
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