THERE seems to be no getting away from it and as she gets older it becomes increasingly noticeable that watching Jacqui Dankworth is like seeing a composite of two chips off the old block.
She's every bit her mother's daughter as she is her father's girl. Musically, though, while her late dad's composing and arranging nous figured in this concert, she is her own person and a few reservations aside here, she may have found her most compatible musical partner in her husband of two years, Memphis-born pianist and singer Charlie Wood.
The influence of Dankworth père was immediately apparent in the opening arrangement of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, taken at a notably relaxed and very sensitive pace, but Wood's ideas were soon to the fore as Dankworth sang Jacques Brel's If You Go Away to a piano accompaniment that signalled Wood's inspiration in fellow Southern Statesman Mose Allison.
Dankworth can be a little bit exposed in this setting, both at low and high tempo, and Wood's playing might benefit from a lighter touch in places. Their song selection, however, is refreshing, whether in reinvigorating a standard such as Lady Be Good with an added vocalese treatment of a Lester Young solo or in bringing James Taylor, Sam Cooke or Michael McDonald songs into the jazz vocabulary.
Wood's own Lucky Charm, sung as a duet that again invoked Mose Allison, and Lil Hardin's Just for a Thrill found Dankworth at her most convincing, using tonal variations and clear, teased out enunciation to fine effect and earning loud approval from a very appreciative audience.
HHH
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