HHHH

"Tweet if you're having fun!" was the instruction from the stage and the information sheet handed out on arrival. It took a song or four before visible signs of enjoyment broke out in the audience, which wasn't due, surely, to bassist and artistic director Gary Crosby's mock-stern "don't dance, this is serious music" directive being taken literally. But once one lone dancer had led the way, there was as much of a party going on in the stalls as there was on the stage.

Bob Marley and the Wailers' Catch a Fire album presents a problem for interpreters: much of the music is taken at a similar, easy-going pace. This was quickly overcome, however, by Jason Yarde's arrangements for big band (the All Stars), eight-piece string section (the Urban Soul Orchestra) and three backing singers. Yarde cajoled myriad tonal shades and vitality from the strings and had the horns erupting with colour behind the charismatic frontman, singer-guitarist Brinsley Forde, to bring variety and renewed expression to iconic songs that married social realism to unashamed tunefulness.

What really lit up the night, though, were the solo, duo and section vignettes that allowed the various personalities room for manoeuvre. Duelling violins aerated Stir it Up brilliantly before the whole string section pizzicato-ed like dancing demons. Trombone and tenor added fire to No More Trouble's Inner City Blues-like groove and as the set-list moved beyond the parent album into Lively up Yourself and Redemption Song, even conductor Kevin Robinson exchanged baton for trumpet to add his flame to the conflagration.