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Whirimako Black concert thrills packed audience
November 10th
[by David Armstrong]
Renowned jazz/blues singer Whirimako Black last night left the fortunate 120-plus music lovers of Motueka in raptures following her two-hour concert at the Chanel Arts Centre. She, along with her ultra-laid back, poker-faced guitarist Nigel Gavin, showed what musical mastery really means.
The event was something of an experiment and adventure for the concert's hosts, the Motueka Music Group. Introducing the show, John Spicer said that the concerts it puts on are normally angled toward classical music but they decided to try out jazz and blues. The resulting packed house - with ticket sales running out days before the event - showed they had struck a worthwhile chord.
This is not a review of the concert. Indeed, such was the high quality of Whirimako's rich, honeyed voice and emotional presentation and of Nigel's at times almost unbelievable guitar playing, that it would be presumptuous of any minor-talented music reviewer to criticise anything.
Whirimako has a wonderfully true voice that holds its richness and apparent ease of production and transition over a large vocal range. Many songs were jazz/blues classics, such as "Autumn meaves", but a substantial minority of her repertoire was sung either fully or partly in te reo. Even those who do not understand spoken (in this case sung) Maori had little problem in understanding the emotions they expressed - specially as Whirimako's introductions spoke intimately of the background of several - and would have left the evening with a better appreciation of the beauty of te reo and how well it can fit with English tongue.
Nigel's guitar work flowed with a consummate ease which belied the complexity of what he can achieve with just 10 fingers, six strings, a few bits of wood, and an electronic system which allowed him to record live his own background chord patterns over which he could play instrumental breaks.
The concert produced many prolonged ovations, including a foot-stomping one at the end that was rewarded with two encores - and a comment from Whirimako that she wouldn't have thought that such a sedate and ... er, middle-aged audience would resort to stamping feet. Nigel looked like - and in fact said several times - that he would be happy to keep playing all night.
A word also about the sound system: I don't know whether it was the way the amplification and balance was set up, or the venue, or (probably) both, but the undistorted clarity and tonal range were superb - every note and every word was received as delivered.
The message of the event to Motueka is that next time high-quality artists visit to perform, BOOK EARLY!
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