Kenny Barron - Ronnie Scott's, London

After a gap of six years, we headed to Ronnie Scott's for the second time in a month - this time to see American pianist Kenny Barron.  We've seen him twice before - both times at Ronnie's. The first occasion was ten years ago, on my sixtieth birthday, and the second time was a couple of years later; based on those experiences it promised to be a good night.  On this occasion, Barron was playing two shows in one evening, and - though in general I much prefer late shows - for practical reasons we were booked into the earlier 18.30 set.

A straightforward journey on the 15.12, a cab ride to Oxford Street and then a stroll down Dean Street, through Soho Square and onto Frith Street.  There were only a couple of people ahead of us in the queue when we started waiting in the cold:

By 17.30, the queues for members and regular ticket holders stretched some way in both directions.  Finally we made it inside to see the female maitre d', to find that, in spite of the large number of members who had been admitted before us 'regular' punters, we had been assigned our requested table.  Happy bunnies:

With a good view of the stage:

A composite showing the view of the room to my left:

The view from Amanda's side of the table (no, I wasn't hiding behind a very large table lamp, I had gone to the loo):

For the concert Amanda simply turns her chair through 180 degrees to get the same view as me.

Food - for Amanda, Gressingham duck breast, roasted root vegetables and prune sauce:

and absolutely no guesses here:

At 18.30, the band took to the stage.  At 81, Barron is someone for whom the word "urbane" might have been created.  He introduced his fellow musicians - Kiyoshi Kitagawa (Osaka) on bass and Jonathan Blake (Philadelphia) on drums, and then, throughout the gig, announced the title of each number and its composer.  As expected, it was a stellar performance from three guys who have played together for decades and have almost telepathic sympathy for each other's playing. After three extended numbers, Kitagawa and Blake left the stage for a short break, while Barron played two solo pieces: the first, a tune called "The Mountain" by Abdullah Ibrahim, about which I have eulogised elsewhere in this blog; the second, a tribute to its composer.

One of the practical reasons that I am not keen on attending the early set of any "double header" is that when the first set finishes, you can be sure of two things: the venue will be interested only in getting the first set of customers out of the door and the house turned around to greet the customers for the second set, and the band will be in the Green Room resting and refreshing themselves.  As a result, the chances of getting autographs or any other kind of engagement with the band will be effectively zero.  

Even knowing all that, I had gone prepared with a small selection of CDs and my trusty Sharpie, so when Jonathan Blake realised that when it came to Barron's solo spot his only effective route off the stage took him past our table, I held up one of his albums - Homeward Bound - and he graciously signed it and shook my hand before continuing on to the bar at the rear:

As can be seen, the album is dedicated to "Ana Grace".  Ana Grace Marquez-Greene was the six-year-old daughter of saxophonist Jimmy Greene and flautist Nelba Marquez-Greene; Ana Grace was killed in the 2012 mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.  Blake had been on tour with Greene at the time of the shooting.  He knew Ana Grace and would later say that "She had such a lively presence. So when I heard she’d been taken away, it affected me and I started writing this tune".  Jimmy Greene was the saxophone player in the band for the Ron Carter concert we attended in Cadogan Hall during the London Jazz Festival in 2023.

After the superb solo interlude by Barron, Kitagawa and Blake rejoined him for the rest of the set.  All too soon the gig was over and we gathered our things before heading out.  As before, a stroll down Frith Street to Shaftesbury Avenue, where we hailed a cab within minutes, and thereby to St Pancras, where the station management have elected to celebrate the birth of Jesus with something inspired by the musical Wicked - which, in that it tells the story of The Witches of Oz, seems like adding insult to injury:

On the 21.35 home:

arriving at 22.45 to find, as is often the case for late returns, the car park barrier was already up and we were not charged for our stay - result!!

On the journey home I had reflected on the evening.  In days gone by (as noted elsewhere in this blog) one of the downsides of a visit to Ronnie's was the number of customers who clearly attended for reasons other than appreciating the music.  In previous visits we have observed groups of women who had been shopping and were keen to chat loudly while the gig was in progress, business colleagues who had sealed a big deal and were similarly keen to celebrate noisily two feet away from us while music was being played, a couple who appeared to be engaged in a face-sucking competition, a group of "Hooray Henries" who appeared to think that they were above the act of making a noise when they applauded and therefore AIR-MIMED the act of clapping, ensuring that their hands never actually met, and a well-oiled businessman who appeared to be trying to make advances to the retail consultant and broadcaster Mary Portas while she was sitting at the adjacent table with her (then) wife...  

In other words, we had grown used to questionable behaviour and (as in the first two instances) I had become accustomed to (somewhat reluctantly) dealing with the offenders myself.  During our two recent visits, then, it was hard to express the delight of sitting in an audience that was essentially silent while the band were playing; on this particular night, so engrossed were the other customers that one could almost literally have heard a pin drop during the quiet passages.  I think that there are three equally important reasons for this change:

1. When booking tickets for Ronnie Scott's, before confirming the purchase, one now has to tick a box to denote acceptance of a number of terms, which now include this:

2. On each table there is now one of these small cards:

3. The act is now introduced by a compere who stands at the front and who, before calling the musicians to the stage, reminds the audience of the need for quiet during the performance.
   

The improvement in audience behaviour between those earlier visits and now has turned a previously good night out to a great one - and I wish that certain other venues (Pizza Express Jazz Club...) would follow suit.

Set List

Trio

1. Isfahan (Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington)
2. Magic Dance (Kenny Barron)
3. New York Attitude (Kenny Barron)

Barron - solo

4. The Mountain (Abdullah Ibrahim)
5. Song for Abdullah (Kenny Barron)

Trio

6. Canadian Sunset (Kenny Barron)
7. Nightfall (Charlie Haden)
8. Calypso (Kenny Barron)

Othello - Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

To Stratford to see Othello.  A late booking resulted in a great price for a room at The Arden:

A rest and a change and we headed off to The Encore for dinner.  View from our table on the first floor:

A burger for me and lamb rump for Amanda:

To the theatre:

And so - what of the play?  

This was the first time we had seen Othello.  Although I had made myself familiar with the plot beforehand, I was certainly not au fait with the details of each scene.  I knew that the play was supposed to begin with a conversation between Iago and Roderigo; however, when the first two actors on stage began to speak, I began to think that perhaps I had missed some detail, and that this was an initial 'stage-setting' conceit by a pair of minor characters - think "Night Watchman 1 and Night Watchman 2".  One character in particular, spoke so quietly and quickly as to be barely audible or comprehensible from our usual seats in the centre front row of the first balcony.  

Imagine, then, my dismay when it became clear that these two were, indeed, Iago and Roderigo.  I wracked my brain - usually I make myself aware of posters announcing last-minute changes to the cast, but I recalled nothing about that night's performance.  In spite of this, I became convinced that not only must Iago be being played by an understudy, but by an under-prepared and nervous understudy at that.  Sadly, no such excuse could be applied.

Will Keen, playing Iago, is an experienced and capable actor of stage, film and TV so, being charitable, I could only conclude that his performance was the responsibility of director Tim Carroll. Unfortunately, what might have worked on TV, or even in a studio theatre, where sotto voce dialogue, subtle inflections and underplayed facial expressions would all be observable to the audience, here it just didn't work. Further - the performance was simply not consistent with the view that Iago is one of Shakespeare's most malevolent villains.  Later, I also reflected on the fact that it did not seem likely that a man of Othello's age, maturity and experience would be so taken in by someone so apparently creepy and obsequious as this Iago.

I persevered, straining to hear and understand Iago and also trying to ignore the voices in my head that had started to declare, "This really isn't very good, and some of the staging is equally bizarre".  As an example of the latter, there were a number of instances of what Peter Viney in his blog (listed under Reviews below) called "declaiming forward".  That is, characters spoke their lines straight out to the audience (it felt as if we were in direct line of fire), even though the characters to whom they were speaking were standing on balconies behind them.  Those characters, in turn, also declaimed to the front of the stage, but thereby effectively to the back of the heads of those to whom they were speaking.  Viney described this as a "strong style choice"; I described it somewhat less charitably as "confusing and pointless"...

The interval.  Fearing I was alone in my observations, I held back until Amanda caught my eye and we both burst out laughing.  "It's not my imagination - this is bad, isn't it?", I asked her. "Oh yes!", she confirmed.  We compared notes and she confirmed most of my feelings.  For a brief moment we considered leaving - for the first time in 45 productions over a decade, but since we had paid good money for our seats, had a hotel room across the road, and nowhere else to be, we decide to stick it out.

When we returned to our seats, a very pleasant young woman sitting next to Amanda asked if we were enjoying it (it was clear from her demeanour that she was).  Trying hard not to 'harsh her buzz' we responded gently in the negative and explained why - one of the first indications that this truly was a Marmite production.

To be fair, I enjoyed the second half slightly more than the first, but largely that was due to there being more action, rather than any improvement in the production.  However, once again the stylised direction left me cold in places.  Specifically, the decision to stage Othello's killing of Desdemona in a complete blackout might have seemed good at the time - "imagined horror is worse than actual", and all that - but it didn't work, and the author of "The Real Chris Sparkle" blog (link below) summed it up perfectly: 

"The ultimate act of horror in the play, when Othello kills Desdemona, is unexpectedly performed in total darkness, as if to deny it’s really happening. All we can hear is some uncomfortable scuffling, like the sound of a fishmonger trying to restrain a feisty flounder flapping around on a slab. I’m afraid it was quite ludicrous."

The mainstream media reviews for the production had been mixed, with an average rating hovering around 3 out of 5.  What proved more interesting was, after the performance, reading the comments on the RSC Facebook pages relating to the play.  It quickly became clear that a significant majority of theatre goers were enchanted and enthralled by the production, eulogising about both the direction and the performance of Iago in particular. Somewhat reassuringly there were a smaller, but still significant, range of responses that cited the same criticisms we had voiced.  Following an exchange of comments with some who enjoyed it I concluded that it would be genuinely interesting to study (if only the data were available) the correlation between "enjoyment of production" and "distance from stage", "number of RSC productions previously seen" and "age of audience" - perhaps we were just too far from the stage, too old and too programmed by other plays to see the supposed good in this one.

My final comment - possibly unfair, but a view genuinely held: while I was watching Iago, I kept being reminded of a series of sketches in the BBC comedy programme "The Impressions Show", in which Jon Culshaw poked fun at Ross Kemp and his programme "Ross Kemp on Gangs".  Never again will I be able to watch Othello without thinking of Will Keen's Iago, and Culshaw's "I could see it was about to kick off - so I got out of there!"

A good night's sleep, and then down to breakfast:

followed by a walk around town, some shopping and then a straightforward run home.

Reviews

#BrumHour

All That Dazzles

Birmingham Mail

British Theatre Guide

Broadway World

Morning Star

Peter Viney's Blog

Stage Talk Magazine

Stage Talk Magazine

The Daily Telegraph

The Guardian

The Real Chris Sparkle

The Reviews Hub

The Stage

Theatre & Tonic

Theatre Weekly

Warwickshire World

West End Best Friend

What’s On Stage

Joe Locke - Ronnie Scott's, London

We're off to Ronnie Scott's for the first time since June 2018.  

An unventful trip down on the 15.12 to St Pancras, and then a cab to Oxford Street, from where we walked down Dean Street and through Soho Square.

We were there to see American vibraphonist Joe Locke; I have around a dozen of his albums, but have never seen him live.

We arrived at around 16.45; the doors were due to open at 17.30, and there were two queues - one (to the left of the doors) for members and one (to the right of the doors) for 'ordinary' ticket holders (like us).  A standard membership currently costs £325 per annum, so we are unlikely to be queuing on the left any time soon...  On the extreme right of this photo I can be seen explaining to a young man that "yes, this is indeed the right queue, but since he has no ticket and I know the gig is sold out, he is unlikely to get in"...

While we waited we started chatting to the family group of three (Mum C, Dad D and son O) in front of us.  "We're up from Bournemouth" said C. "Oh", I replied, "we're down from Leicester" - and thus began one of the most bizarrely unlikely coincidences that I have ever experienced.  

D revealed that he originally came from Leicester, and had gone to a school, the playing fields of which lie at the end of our back garden.  "When did you leave?" asked Amanda.  "Around 1985", said D.  "Oh", I said,  "we moved in around 1989".  "But of course, you were in Leicester long before that", said Amanda.  "Yes", I agreed, "I arived at the university in 1973 and never quite got around to leaving".

"What did you read?" asked D. "Physics", I replied. Pause. "You don't?", pause, "happen to know a chap called PH, do you?" asked D.  "Err, yes", I replied, somewhat taken aback - "we graduated the same year - he was in my group".  D looked equally shocked.  "But that's not the most amazing thing", I continued, "S, the girl P married, was my girlfriend during our first two years at university...".

Subsequent discussions revealed that D had taught at the same school as S and, in that role, had taught one of S&P's sons.  We were all still reeling from the staggering odds against such a coincidence when the doors opened and we moved inside to find out from the female maitre d' to which table we had been assigned.

Based on many past experiences, at the time of booking I had requested a specific table we have had before but, given the large number of members in attendance, was not surprised that it had already been allocated,  We were, however, delighted to find that the table we HAD been assigned - on the opposite side of the room to that in which we normally sit - was actually better than the one we had requested, and will therefore become our de facto request in future.

Obligatory photos of each other:

and our vew of the stage:

We ordered our food and drinks and settled down to wait - at which point I noticed that Joe Locke had emerged from the Green Room and was surveying the room from just to the side of the stage, while talking to someone else.  I had come prepared with Joe's latest CD and a Sharpie, and approached them while I had a chance.  

I was greeted like a long-lost friend - "Heey maaan!", cried Joe, "thanks so much for coming out tonight, and for buying the CD.  This guy here is the bassist on the recording, so you gotta get his autograph as well" - and so bassist Lorin Cohen also kindly applied his John Hancock to the proffered disc.  There followed a brief conversation in which Joe expressed his preference for physical media over downloads, and I described the effort required to maintain an Excel spreadsheet of all my recordings ("Hard core!", opined Lorin).  

At that point, things got REALLY weird - I was on the point of thanking them and taking my leave when Joe looked over my shoulder and greeted the one and only Claire Martin (OBE) - one of the UK's top jazz vocalists, together with a gentleman I now believe was Craig Hume, a partner in Funkgurus, the Artist Management group with whom Claire is currently signed.  Claire proffered her hand and I shook it, while explaining that I was "just a fan", which she graciously dismissed as being unnecessarily humble.

Back to our table, whereupon our food duly arrived.  Sea bass for Amanda:

 and I bet you can't guess what mine was:

This was followed by raspberry crème brulée for Amanda, and my usual chocolate ice cream, after which we settled down and waited.  As the lights dimmed the compère took to the stage and (blessed relief, and how I wish the Pizza Express Jazz Club would follow suit) reminded the audience to not only ensure that all mobiles were switched to silent, but also to keep all chatter and associated noise to an absolute minimum when the band were playing.

The guys played two superb sets, with Joe (who admitted that he likes to talk - and talk) introducing each number and, for his own tunes, providing the story of how the tune came into being.  Towards the end of the first set, Joe introduced and brought on to the stage the (originally from London and now from NYC) alto saxophonist Will Vinson, who joined the band to play the standard Airegin (Nigeria backwards), originally composed by the now 94-year-old Sonny Rollins.  Will is pictured here during the interval, just as he was leaving.

All too soon the second set was over, and we gathered our belongings - grateful that I had 'seized the moment' earlier in the evening,  as long queues formed in the foyer for Joe to sign CDs.

Out onto Frith Street, and a stroll down to Shaftesbury Avenue, where we hailed a cab back to St Pancras and the 22.32 home, arriving in Leicester at a mercifully early (by our usual standards) 23.36.

Altogether a great night, and a welcome return to Ronnie's.

Alison Rayner Quintet - The Musician, Leicester