Music
Tim Kliphuis Sextet
Queen’s Hall
Rob Adams
FOUR STARS
It’s not all that often that you come across a concert programme that juxtaposes Robert Burns with the Mahavishnu Orchestra and follows an Astor Piazzolla-inspired tango with Moon River as a feature for musical saw.
This, though, is the sort of cosmopolitan flavour that Dutch violinist Tim Kliphuis has fostered in his trio over the past decade and it was the menu here as the group expanded, firstly, to include added, violin, viola and cello and then, on Burns’ Brose and Butter, renamed Cous Cous and Butter for the occasion, swelled further with the arrival of five City of Edinburgh Music School students demonstrating their new-found improvising talents.
Mahavishnu’s impressionistic A Lotus on Irish Streams may be some way removed from Kliphuis’ fascination with Stephane Grappelli’s swing violin style but the sextet played it beautifully, bringing out all the atmosphere and sustained expression of the original, just as they had slipped effortlessly from Bach study grandeur to gypsy swing and zing in John Lewis’ tribute to Grappelli’s partner, Django Reinhardt.
If just occasionally the musical blend sounded a little laboured, the musicians’ chemistry and virtuosity quickly diverted the attention, with Su-a Lee (the musical saw soloist) rocking the Summer extract from Kliphuis’ reimagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with some mighty cello riffing in partnership with guitarist Nigel Clark and bassist Roy Percy and Seonaid Aitken matching Kliphuis’s violin improvisations with conspicuous joie de vivre.
Aitken also added a lovely song – Don’t Worry About Me – as well as partnering Lee and violist Francesca Hunt in the effervescent chamber-bluegrass treatment Kliphuis has brought to his Aaron Copland medley, Hoedown for the Common Man.
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