John Fordham 

Iles/Winstone/Siegel – review

The show was officially Winstone's gig but she and Iles wove their sophisticated sorcery together, writes John Fordham
  
  


The New Yorker critic Whitney Balliett said the work of jazz pianist Bill Evans resembled "a contest between his intense wish to practise a wholly private music and an equally intense wish to express his joy at having found such a music within himself". That description often fits the English singer Norma Winstone, a performer who has long turned private rumination into reverberating eloquence – and also Nikki Iles, a pianist powerfully influenced by Evans (though of more outgoing disposition), who has been celebrating her 50th year with a variety of ventures. This Lauderdale House show was officially Winstone's gig – the lineup replicated the instrumentation of her acclaimed European trio – but everybody's and nobody's voice dominated it, as Winstone and Iles wove their sophisticated sorcery with the attentive assistance of reeds player Julian Siegel.

Winstone was initially unsettled by sound-system reverb on a softly rocking account of Who Can I Turn To?, though Iles's free-floating intro and purring swing groove carried the piece and displayed her particular artistry – in repolishing a traditionally lyrical jazz-piano approach to establish anticipation, purpose and excitement without hooks, electronics or hybrids with more recent styles.

With the reverb gone, Winstone's wide range and low-volume power brought awed entrancement to the Fred Hersch ballad Stars (encouraged by Siegel's swooping Stan Getzian tenor sax and Iles' softly-dabbed chords), and Kenny Wheeler's Everybody's Song But My Own found the singer skipping through a scat break, Iles gleefully embroidering a catchy boogieing phrase she discovered in mid-solo, and all three winding up in a kind of gracefully funky dance. Siegel lurked balefully on bass clarinet behind Tony Coe's blithely sinister Tango Beyond, Winstone barely breathed on Joni Mitchell's desolate Two Grey Rooms, and the three were of one mind on some hurtling unison bebop. The only loud sounds were the cheers from the crowded room when they stopped.

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