Katie Whitakker sings Etta James, Piccolo, George Square, Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

 Does what it says on the tin.

Perth Based Whittaker belted out Etta James songs, with a Bessie Smith thrown into the mix, with passion and feeling.  She's got a voice that's well up to paying tribute to one of the all time greats of blues, jazz and soul, and the personality to put on a good show.

But.  She deserved better than the five piece band - guitar, keyboard, piano, bass and drums - were able to deliver on the day.  The wonderful percussionist Signy Jakobsdottir did a sterling job of trying to hold it all together, but there was always a feeling of being under rehearsed as an outfit, and a little shambolic at times.  That doesn't mean they were bad, but not up to the standard we've come to expect from JazzFest bands, and the one Whittaker's vocals deserved.

On another night this would probably have been a much better gig, but on this occasion I left underwhelmed. 

Les Violons de Bruxelles and Rose Room, Assembly hall, Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

 Scotland's top gypsy jazz band, Rose Room, opened the show.  Old stagers Jimmy Moon and Tam Gallagher on upright bass and rhythm guitar respectively, new boy Conor Smith on lead guitar, fronted by renowned fiddler, singer and arranger Seonaid Aitken.  A mix of 20s, 30s and 40s jazz and swing standards, mostly in the Django style, but with varying influences creeping.

It's a compliment to say you'd notice the rhythm section most if they weren't there - nothing flashy or obtrusive about their play, just the perfect backdrop to allow the soloists to do their thing.  Smith plays with remarkable clarity of tone and plenty variation.  Aitken sings well, holding the high notes without waver, enunciating clearly and showing true jazz sensibilities in her phrasing.  Her playing is pure, a strong homage to the great Grapelli, without his vast range of invention maybe, but how many have?  And nobody in the room looks like they're having a better time than Seoniad does, her grin permanent and infectious during the performance. A joy to watch and hear.

If you say gypsy swing quartet you immediately think of the classic line up offered by Rose Room.  But Les Violons de Bruxelles break all the rules of the genre.  It was clear something very different was to be served up even before they hit the stage.  The stage set up was unusual, with a couple of overhead mikes , a couple almost at floor level, and another pair near the piano stool for a band that doesn't have a keyboard.  Either this was to be an entirely acoustic set, or they'd sneaked Highland bagpipes into the line up!

No pipes of course, and the band assembled before us, 5 very serious looking middle aged men, with a lot of serious hair going on, in a tight little group mid stage.  They swiftly launched into their first couple of numbers and while the facial expressions changed little the music was galvanising.  

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Three men under the overhead mikes, one on the piano stool, one at the back.  The latter was Sam Gerstmans, on double bass, while Renaud Dardenne got the seat with his guitar.  The opposite of the preceding act, both play complex rhythms much of the time, weaving a pattern underneath the leading strings, while also contributing  excellent solos.  The tight three were Alexandre Tripodi on viola, violinist Renaud Crois, and band leader, spokesman and vocalist Tcha Limberger with his violin.  The set included a few jazz standards, some lesser know tunes and a few from around the world.  While the gypsy swing genre was predominant, there was great variety in the styles, and I found myself imagining I was in a Middle Eastern souk, watching a Brazilian samba, or absorbing the delicacy of a chamber quartet.  The arrangements are tight with a distinctive LVdB character, full of unanticipated departures and byways, and the solos from every one of the quintet are always a delight. 

But there's no doubting who is the real star.  Limberger's an charmingly amusing raconteur, his singing voice might not be technically all that great but it has character and wonderful phrasing, and his violin playing is top drawer, with as sweet a tone as you'll hear.  No wonder that Aitken described him as one of her heroes.

They left to a well deserved standing ovation, and at least one new fan in your critic.

Stephanie Trick and Paolo Alderighi, Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

 How many fingers do you need to play the piano?  Two for Chopsticks.  Ten for real.  So how about fifteen?  Or twenty?  Husband and wife duo Trick and Alderighi have spent years perfecting their four handed act and the result is a joy not just to listen to, but also to watch. 

The melodies are early twentieth century - jazz classics mostly, with tributes in there to the likes of Bessie Smith and Duke Ellington.  And, just to be different, a stride arrangement of a bit of Edvard Grieg.  A simple formula.  Set out the melody in the first few bars, then turn it inside out, upside down and round in circles.  The theme remains, the delivery changes constantly.  Whether it's either musician performing a solo, or the pair working together, the key is unpredictability.  Surprise and delight, with notes appearing where notes have no business being, and balladeering mixing with jazz and boogie woogie (Trick's speciality).  

Is one of the pair better than the other?  Who knows?  They play as one so much of the time.  You think the high notes must be coming from the dancing fingers of the one seated on the right, when you see hands and arms flitting between one an other.  Then one stands and moves around to take over.  It's as mesmeric to watch as it is to listen to.  

The musicians have fun, the audience has fun.  On top of their virtuosity they have developed (and clearly rehearsed into perfection) a smart line in physical comedy, a carefully choreographed performance that matches the surprises in the music and demonstrates their intuitive teamwork.

Wonderfully diverting.

Blues Afternoon (Lisa Mills, Cinelli Brothers, Stacy Mitchhart), Spiegeltent, George Square, Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

 A solo act to get things going.  Mississippi's Lisa Mills belts out blues, gospel and soul, in a mix of original songs and covers.  No finger picking fanciness, but she's an excellent chord guitarist, has a powerful voice that brings a hint of gravel, a heavy punch and a sense of soulfulness, and an engaging smile and personality that makes an audience feel a part of the show.  It's hard work being first on in an early afternoon show, but Mills did a fine job.  With the highlight being a stunning unaccompanied gospel number aided by the audience clapping along.  A ggod staert to the show.

The Cinelli Brothers are a powerful 4 piece band inspired by the Chicago Blues of the sixties and seventies, with R&B, soul and funk influences.  The eponymous siblings are Marco on lead guitar and keyboard, with Allesandro on drums.  They're joined by bassist Stephen Giry and Tom Julian-Jones on guitar and harmonica.

Initial impressions weren't all that encouraging.  Largely unsmiling, little attempt to engage the audience, and a couple of songs that suggested this was little more than a good quality pub band.  But that soon changed.  A longer piece saw three solos from Marco on piano, Julian-Jones on guitar, and Giry's bass.  The first two were decent enough, but not inspiring.  But Giry sparked into life and showed off his feel for the capabilities of the four-string, and his own musical imagination.  How often do you see the spark that lights up a gid being provided by a bass solo?!

Something seemed to click with the entire line up because they were like a different outfit after that.  Effervescent, filled with enjoyment and feeding off one another, they got better and better over the fifty minutes.  Mostly covers, some original material, with a tight rhythm section and strong vocals.  Largely from Marco and Tom, but both the others showed they had decent voices.  Arrangements were smart and the solos improved, keys, guitar and harmonica.  At one point Giry handed his bass over to Marco and played a mean slide guitar, while Allessandro had his chance to shine near the end, with a drum solo lasting a a few minutes.  Which proved to be one of the best of the set, and I was sad to see it come to a close.  

The Cinellis provide rowdy fun with some classy touches.

Even before he reached the stage there was no doubting who the star of the afternoon was.  With an empty spot in the middle of the stage, the drums, bass, keyboard and sax started up, quickly joined by the sound of a wailing blues guitar, and Stacy Mitchhart swaggered in from the back, saying hi to the audience along the way.  Charisma is hard to define but easy to spot.  Mitchhart has an abundance.

He's probably not everyone's cup of tea - a joker, a showman, a flirt, with some questionable attitudes to women being evinced - but he's very much his own man, a larger than life creation of his own making.  While we and the band sweltered in the increasingly humid Spiegeltent, Stacy's fedora and suit jacket remained in place with no ill effects.  As he said, that's what living in Tennessee does for you.  

The set was a mix of blues classics, some original songs, and his inventive arrangements of a Beatles song (Come Together) and a Led Zep rocker (Whole Lotta Love).  Mitchhart played electric guitar, steel guitar, and one of his home-made cigar box three-strings.  Lots of chat, some funny stories, and one very moving tale when he introduced the cigar box.  And plenty of great music.  Mitchhart has a fine blues voice, less distinctive than Mills, but equally powerful and full of inflections.  His guitar playing is at another level though, and we were treated to some wonderful solos.  He's also generous to his band, and everyone got their chance to shine.  Beautiful, soulful sax work, keys with a sixties feel to them, and decent bass and drum solos (albeit not in the same class as the spectacular offerings from the Cinellis).  

But the focus remained with the star of the show, an imaginative musician and great entertainer.  He left the way he came in, walking off through the audience and doing what he does best with his fingers...

Martin Harley, Piccolo, George Square, Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

 Harley came out alone to begin with and played a couple of songs on his Hawaiian lap guitar, showing off his slide mastery.  To break us in gently he said, and it was a restful beginning, but with that wailing slide bringing complexity.  Then he was joined by the remainder of the band, Harry Harding on drums and backing vocals, and Rex Horan, a man of considerable hair, on electric bass and backing vocals.  And what Harley called 'the elephant in the room'.  Sitting patiently on it's stand, waiting to play a starring role later in the gig, was Horan's sousaphone, unavoidable in shiny Armitage Shanks white.  

Other than one Tom Waites song, which came with one of Martin's funniest intros, all numbers were Harley compositions, which was both good and bad.  The good was the personal link he had with his material, and the stories that lay behind the writing.  The bad, or maybe less good, was some blandness in the material, with no truly memorable melodies or lyrics.

But that's not to say this wasn't a thoroughly enjoyable 90 minutes. Martin has a a good voice and excellent musical technique.  Not quite in the top rank for imagination, and some of the solos lacked any sense of surprise, but he's a solid professional who is also an excellent entertainer, connecting well with his audience.  A great drum solo from Harding, tons of personality and fun from Horan, and Harley's punchlines make for a great live act.  The perfect warm up for the week and a bit ahead of this year's long awaited festival.

Brian and Charles

You might have heard the expression "Like a wet weekend in Wales" to signify dreariness.  The setting for this movie is very much from that idiom, the skies grey and threatening, the landscape bleak and foreboding, the rain never far off.   From this dismal background springs a fairy tale for the twenty first century.  And, like most fairy tales, with an element of morality at it's heart.

Middle aged Brian (David Earl) lives, alone, lonely and off-centre, in a remote farmstead in the Welsh mountains, and makes for his lack of human companionship by inventing (and eating a lot of cabbage).  Using whatever bits and pieces he has lying around, or garners from the rich source of fly tipping, he comes up with the weird and the wonderful and the downright dangerous.  Anyone need a belt to carry their eggs in?  And if one fails, then there's always something else to have a go at.  Brian has a fertile imagination.  Heath Robinson meets Wallace and Gromit.

His most ambitious project is a robot, with artificial intelligence.  The head of an old shop window mannequin, the body of a busted washing machine, random bit of this and that and, hey presto, Brian finally has a friend.  Charles Petrescu (Chris Hayward) turns out to be every bit as eccentric as his creator, and far more prone to getting into situations.  Eddie (Jamie Michie), the local bully, threatens, while Brian finds the android an aid to developing a stuttering relationship with the equally lonely and downtrodden Hazel (Louise Brealley).

It's shot as a sort-of of mockumentary, but doesn't cling slavishly to the format.  This is a free form low budget kind of a film, and that's a big part of the charm.  There's romance, bromance and, as the Film Board suggest, 'mild threat'!  Suspend disbelief, go with the fantasy, and there are plenty of laughs, a redemptive storyline and lots of daftness.  And if you're looking for a moral, then the message that human relationships, and love, can take many forms is something we all need reminding of.

If you do go to see Brian and Charles, and I think you should, do yourself a favour and stay right through the credits at the end.  You'll be rewarded, visually and aurally, for your wait.

Le Vent du Nord, King's Place, London

 "Folkies, eh - what are we like?"  Even now there are still those who associate the term folk music with something staid, moribund, old fashioned.  Maybe they need to see Le Vent du Nord, who blend traditional Quebecois tunes and techniques with modern instrumentation and arrangements.  And explode with life - this is a band that connects with it's audience the moment it walks out on stage.

Plug electric keyboard and bass into the mix of traditional instruments - fiddles, accordion, guitar and mandolin, jew's harp and the wonderful hurdy-gurdy.  Then add the Quebecois tradition of podorythmie, where the feet beat out complex rhythms, and five fine harmonising voices, including a triple choice of lead vocalist.  That's Le Vent du Nord.  Most of the songs are old, with a few modern additions to the canon, but the presentation is bang up to date, and almost theatrical at times.

The set list was heavy on tracks form the recent album, 20 Printemps, celebrating their two decades as a band.  Audience participation is encouraged.  It's hard to pick out highlights, but Ma Louise swings from joyous to heart wrenching, even if you understand little of the lyrics, and the mouth music of Turlutte du Mai, where two pairs of percussive shoes accompany an acapella rendition, makes you wonder how such rich harmonies can spring from only five voices, like a mini male voice choir.  Then there was the comedy turn of the drinking song L'Auberge, where four drunks surround soloist Simon Beaudry and sway in formation around him.  Or the podorythmie 'duel' between the two fiddlers.  Meanwhile the music accepts influences from jazz and classical and pop genres, featuring dazzling solos from all the band members.

The gig ends with the audience on their feet, dancing and whooping, and grins on every face.  A good time guaranteed.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

 The tart with the heart of gold is an ancient literary device, and a well travelled Hollywood trope.  Leo Grande manages to bring some novelty to this cliched contrivance by making the tart a young, very intelligent, young man, while the person paying for his services is a prim and repressed retired RE teacher.  Is that enough to overcome the overworked origins of the relationship?

Set largely in the one hotel room, the action takes us through the first and subsequent meetings of widowed Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson), looking for some spark she never found in her long marriage, and (unbelievably) gorgeous sex worker Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack).  Hiring Grande has been a long contemplated act of bravery, of trying to break out of the character life has created for her.  And the man offers her whatever she wants from him.  Whether that's the simple release of physical sex, or something more, not even Nancy knows at first.

Leo becomes as much counsellor as lover, while Nancy questions him about his job, his family, always probing as if he were one of her pupils.  There's some discussion over the role of sex work in society, and hints of how women of 'a certain age' become almost hidden, but there's no real depth or answers.

The script, by Katy Brand, feels more suited to the stage at times, but the pair make the best of what they've been given.  McCormack does a good job of overcoming the too-good-to-be-true persona he initially projects and delivering some vulnerability to that perfect exterior.  But this is mostly another Thompson masterclass in character creation and building.  The opening ten minutes are a delight, Emma excelling as a bundle of anxiety and embarrassed awkwardness, while reminding the audience of the great comic timing she has always possessed.  And it is refreshing to see such an honest warts-and-all physical performance from a sixty-something leading lady, something that's still all too rare on our screens.  

All of which could make this film sound like a bit of a dud, which is far from being true.  It's very funny, exhibits genuine pathos, and has great performances.  If the inevitable moment of epiphany seems a little trite, it's also a message that we need.  Learning to love ourselves, being honest about our own flaws, is something that still remains so hard for so many.  Ignore the clunky title and go and see a movie that offers something for everyone. 

(As I left I found myself thinking about the budget for this production - no outdoor locations, no special effects, only 2 sets and a tiny cast, so I wonder what % was spent on the big star name?!)