Siren Songs: Jacqui Dankworth in Concert
Stockbridge Church - preview 06/08/23
Main run from 11-13 August, at 8 pm
A great singer from a great musical family
Clea Friend has established Stockbridge Parish Church as a key music venue in Edinburgh over the past year with her ‘music hub in the community’ concept. During the Festival it has become an important out-of-the-centre music venue and as Jacqui Dankworth said at her concert last night it must be the nicest festival venue in Edinburgh with its lovely coloured panels and its good acoustics. Its only drawback is that it gets a little chilly in the evenings in our so-called summer and of course the church heating isn’t on.
Jacqui Dankworth comes from a musical ‘royal family’ background with Sir Johnnie Dankworth as her father (he was knighted for services to jazz) so her mother Cleo Laine became Lady Dankworth, or as some titled her the ‘First Lady of jazz’. More importantly her mother was a great actress and a very fine singer, indeed Cleo starred in the Edinburgh Festival production of Kurt Weill’s opera ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ in 1961. Now sixty years later her daughter, who has already become an MBE for services to music, carries on that tradition and Cleo remarkably is still alive at 95! Like her mother Jacqui is a singer but also an actress and has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and in the west end.
Talking to Jacqui afterwards it is clear that while aware of her musical heritage she wants to be her own person, her own singer and she undoubtedly is. Her resemblance to Cleo is striking but her voice is different; Cleo was a contralto whose lovely low notes could be draped around Shakespearean sonnets or jazz standards. Jacqui is very much a soprano, one who can bend the notes, can act and present the music in a theatrical manner. She was very well accompanied by her American husband, Charlie Wood, a very fine pianist, and Scottish- Brazilian bass player Mario Caribé. They provided a perfect accompaniment to Jacqui and the sound was excellent.
I snapped with her permission her playlist and it included lots of standards of the jazz world, like Gershwin’s first song ‘My Ship’, plus interesting arrangements of standards, like ‘Windmills of your Mind’, ‘Lucky to be Me’, ‘In My Solitude’, ’The Way we Were’ etc. Backstage I filled her in on one song she sang, Ewan McColl’s ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ which she introduced as a ‘folk song’, I explained to her it’s really a love song which Ewan wrote for Peggy Seeger to take part in a U.S. competition. Ewan wrote it in two days in 1958 and sang it Peggy over the telephone whilst she was in California. He never sang it again, saying “it’s now your song Peggy”. It has since been recorded by over 200 singers world-wide and became a number one hit for Roberta Flack. Jacqui sang it very much in her arrangement and I told her I thought Peggy Seeger would have loved it! So yes Jacqui is her own woman with her own voice. It’s a very good voice with a great stage presence and we were lucky to be there to hear her.
The main run of ‘Siren Songs’ is 11-13 August, at Stockbridge Church, 8 pm. Catch it if you can.
Charlie Wood is also performing ‘Trouble in Mind: 100 Years of the Blues’ at Argyle Cellar Bar, August 7-28 at 5 pm, and The Jazz Bar, August 8 and 15 at 2.30pm.
