Melrose Quartet at the Witham
Apr. 29th, 2018 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustBarnard Castle's Butter Market, like every on-trend public building, is currently wearing scaffolding. The green net overskirt is a distinctive touch, and particularly otherworldly after dark, floodlit under an almost-full moon.
We were in Barnard Castle last night for a concert at the Witham. But first, a pre-concert dinner with friends: baked risotto and all the gossip, what could be nicer?
The Melrose Quartet are Nancy Kerr and James Fagin, whom we have seen a number of times in different permutations of personnel, plus Richard and Jess Arrowsmith, whom we have never seen before. I'd heard enough of the Quartet on record and radio to know I would enjoy the live performance, but not enough to know what shape the evening would take. Some of this and some of that, it turns out: some songs and some instrumentals; some traditional material, some they had written themselves and some by other people; a good balance altogether. Nancy Kerr is an outstanding songwriter, and I was delighted to hear her song Santa Georgia, which I had half heard once on the radio and been unable to identify:
One unscheduled treat: after the first song, there was a problem with the amplification - possibly the instruments weren't being picked up properly? - and while the sound engineer was doing technical heroics, the band stepped in front of the microphones and sang The Seeds of Love. It was wonderful. The hall is a decent size but not enormous, the acoustics are good, the quartet are a bunch of serious and accomplished singers who know what they are doing, it sounded great, and it felt so much more direct. Which may be entirely subjective, but I think the band felt it too, because when it came to the encore they stepped forward again and sang Come and I will sing you as they do here:
Is there something that makes some songs more suited to this treatment than others? I don't know. But more like this, please.
We were in Barnard Castle last night for a concert at the Witham. But first, a pre-concert dinner with friends: baked risotto and all the gossip, what could be nicer?
The Melrose Quartet are Nancy Kerr and James Fagin, whom we have seen a number of times in different permutations of personnel, plus Richard and Jess Arrowsmith, whom we have never seen before. I'd heard enough of the Quartet on record and radio to know I would enjoy the live performance, but not enough to know what shape the evening would take. Some of this and some of that, it turns out: some songs and some instrumentals; some traditional material, some they had written themselves and some by other people; a good balance altogether. Nancy Kerr is an outstanding songwriter, and I was delighted to hear her song Santa Georgia, which I had half heard once on the radio and been unable to identify:
One unscheduled treat: after the first song, there was a problem with the amplification - possibly the instruments weren't being picked up properly? - and while the sound engineer was doing technical heroics, the band stepped in front of the microphones and sang The Seeds of Love. It was wonderful. The hall is a decent size but not enormous, the acoustics are good, the quartet are a bunch of serious and accomplished singers who know what they are doing, it sounded great, and it felt so much more direct. Which may be entirely subjective, but I think the band felt it too, because when it came to the encore they stepped forward again and sang Come and I will sing you as they do here:
Is there something that makes some songs more suited to this treatment than others? I don't know. But more like this, please.
