29-April-2015
Cheltenham Jazz Festival
Cheltenham, England
Cheltenham Jazz Festival
Cheltenham, England
My clear recollection from the previous time Van Morrison played this festival two years ago was that the sound was superb and Van’s voice was terrific on the night. Well tonight was no different except that the concert happily was far superior on this occasion. After a fairly predictable opening two numbers of Celtic Swing and Close Enough For Jazz the next song was far from predictable with Clare Teal joining Van for a wonderful duet on Carrying A Torch which fairly brought the house down.Clare remained on stage for a further high quality duet on The Way Young Lovers Do and the tone had been set for the night. Being a jazz festival it was little surprise that Symphony Syd followed and this gave Dana Masters the opportunity to shine on vocals which she certainly did. I Believe To My Soul saw Van deliver an extraordinary vocal performance in what was one of many show stoppers on the night. The next song announced by Van seemed to catch the band by surprise and he barked Fair Play a second and more audible time before delivering this all too rarely played masterpiece which featured great organ from Paul Moran and guitar from Dave Keary.Van was really in the zone by now and Moondance followed featuring a wonderful bass solo from Paul Moore. I was very pleased to then hear the unmistakeable intro to In The Afternoon which was an extended and quite wonderful version featuring all the required ingredients including ancient highways, overpasses, Big Joe Turner, TV Mama et al before Van repeatedly uttered the words Burn Baby Burn to the spellbound audience before concluding the song.
Baby Please Don’t Go/Parchman Farm/Don’t Start Crying Now upped the tempo considerably before another treat followed in Did Ye Get Healed? Rough God Goes Riding featured not only Dana on shared vocals but also Van in impression mode as Clint Eastwood,Robert De Niro,Al Pacino (Van didn’t think this one was much good and he was right) and finally Joe Pesci which Van rightly reckoned he could do much better as he aimed some ferocious kicks at an imaginary victim on the ground. Most of the audience had probably not witnessed this part of Van’s portfolio before and they lapped it up.
Van strapped on his guitar to ‘hide behind’ and delivered Guitar Slim’s Things I Used To Do which is a fast blues number that gave the band the opportunity to go into overdrive. When Van left on the guitar I hoped for something even more substantial and was more than pleased to hear the opening notes to And The Healing Has Begun which as you would expect was quite majestic with Van mixing his brilliant vocal delivery with some really impressive guitar work. Wonderful!
Whenever God Shines His Light was powerfully delivered with Dana shining again on vocals. The opening notes of Ballerina were met with a great cheer from the audience and they were not to be disappointed as Van delivered another impressive version. When Van departed we thought it might be all over but he returned one more time to beat the audience into submission with a great In The Garden.
The concert lasted 1h 38m, was simply superb and bettered (possibly) in my view this year only by the second night at Nell’s in London on March 1st.Van was really performing as opposed to merely singing the songs and there is a big difference.
-Brendan Hynes
Setlist
Celtic Swing
Close Enough For Jazz
Carrying A Torch (w/Clare Teal)
The Way Young Lovers Do (w/Clare Teal)
Symphony Syd
I Believe To My Soul
Fair Play
Moondance
In The Afternoon
Baby Please Don’t Go/Parchman Farm/Don’t Start Crying Now
Did Ye Get Healed
Rough God Goes Riding
Things I Used To Do
And The Healing Has Begun
Whenever God Shines His Light
Ballerina
In The Garden
Big Hand for The Band!
Dave Keary (Guitar)
Paul Moore (Bass)
Paul Moran (Keyboards)
Bobby Ruggiero (Drums)
Dana Masters (Vocals)
Gloucestershire Echo (Source)
As the band struck up and blues legend Van Morrison strolled on to the stage of the Big Top to open Cheltenham Jazz Festival, I was a little worried.
Behind him there were guitars, drums, organs and double basses aplenty but the brass section was conspicuous by its absence.
How was the old dog going to do his big blues and jazz numbers without the trumpets and saxophones belting out behind him?
Just as I was beginning to despair, VM reached behind him, pulled out a tenor sax and blew us all away with several uninterrupted minutes of liquid gold schmoozing to open up what proceeded to be a night of blues magic.
He and his band – multi-instrumentalists to a man, with more talent than you can shake a stick at – were buoyed up by a first night audience, welcoming the first big name of the festival with light hearts and a thirst for great music. And that's exactly what they got.
I've seen VM play a good many times and he is as unpredictable as he is talented. Often he is very good, occasionally he's decidedly mediocre.
Tonight however, he was fabulous, and, while the weather outside turned chilly, this Northern Irish musician with so much soul in his heart, turned up the heat again with 90 minutes of uplifting blues and jazz.
With a voice like no other, age has not withered this incredibly talented singer songwriter as he proved to Cheltenham, powering his way through such hits as Moondance, Whenever God Shines His Light, Rough God Goes Riding and Did Ye Get Healed.
He paid his due to some of the great old blues singers when he played Baby Please Don't Go by Lightnin' Hopkins, followed by a 12 bar blues song called The Things I Used To Do by 1950's New Orleans' bluesman Guitar Slim.
Jazz singer Clare Teal made a surprise appearance at the beginning of the night, singing two duets with Van, before heading off into the darkness.
And much to everyone's surprise, the normally morose Van was in a jovial mood, joking with his band and even, bizarrely, doing impressions of Godfather actors, Robert de Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci.
But the night was really about the music and the pressure rose with a sublime version of Ancient Highway, building to a wild sea of sound that swept out and flowed over us, followed by a brilliant version of Did Ye Get Healed that made your heart leap with joy. I could have listened to it all night.
Yet more was to follow. With Whenever God Shines His Light and Rough God Goes Riding came more of that deep soulful blues sound, building up from the depths of his chest and out through his throat like crackling fire.
And in the end? We were treated to just one encore – but what an encore. Said by many to be his seminal work, In The Garden sums up everything that is great about the man John Lee Hooker once described as 'my favourite white blues singer'.
No guru, no method, no teacher. No contest – Van is still the Man.
-Helen Blow
