An evening packed with wit and virtuosity
Jazz Nigel Kennedy Royal Festival Hall ★★★★★
The bad boy of classical music may finally be growing up. His hair is as spiky as ever, he still seems to be wearing a nephew’s cast-offs and he still gives gleeful high-fives to members of his band but Nigel Kennedy is a serious musician.
He proclaims that his attachment to the classical world and to Bach, in particular, is as strong as ever but, in fact, his performance of the fugue from Bach’s G minor solo sonata was the evening’s only disappointment. Perhaps the performance was overshadowed by what was to follow – Kennedy’s new suite entitled The Magician of Lublin, which, as he explained, was inspired by Isaac Bashevis Singer’s stories of life in the Jewish communities of Warsaw. It was saved from Fiddler on the Roof clichés by his engaging melodic quirkiness and subtle harmonic sense.
After the interval the tone changed, as Kennedy and his long-standing supporting quintet of two guitars, cello and bass offered a sequence of Gershwin arrangements that were full of wit, virtuosity and surprising harmonic turns.
Not many musicians reinvent themselves so thoroughly as Kennedy, and we should salute him for that.
Kennedy meets Gershwin is out now on Warner Classics