The stomping left-hand dance of the stride-piano style and its ornate and glittering melodies seem to perfectly mirror the mingled sophistication and voluptuous exhilaration of the first era of jazz. A virtuosic self-contained piano technique, it developed out of ragtime in the early 20th century, and included Fats Waller and Art Tatum among its most famous exponents. Judy Carmichael, the personable and technically assured American pianist, is a devoted protector of stride's illustrious past. Count Basie, no slouch at the method himself, even pinned the genre's title on her as a nickname that has stuck.
Carmichael played the Pizza on the Park in Knightsbridge for two unaccompanied evenings, and a full house on Friday sat in awed silence through the pianist's immaculate unfoldings of a repertoire of standards associated with Hoagy Carmichael (no relation, as she likes to get straight early on), Fats Waller and other jazz giants. Like a stride-piano Joanna McGregor, Carmichael is also a communicative soul who believes in spreading the word and deepening a public understanding of where the music is coming from, so her between-numbers chats play a big part in the entertainment value of her show.
Hardline jazzers, and not necessarily unforgiving modernists either, will baulk at Carmichael's classical approach to this vibrant material; the downside of the exercise being that in her delicate hands the pieces do emerge as immaculately burnished expositions rather than the vehicles for bold improvisation for which they were developed by Tatum and Waller. She also tends to play an originally barnstorming and unruly party-music unexpectedly quietly and with its dynamic variety strictly controlled, which enforces the classical-recital effect.
Yet Carmichael has warmth, wit and an unmistakeable love for her materials - powerful ingredients when hooked to her formidable keyboard agility. Hoagy Carmichael's Judy chattered by like fastmoving spring-water, Christopher Columbus (deployed in the Benny Goodman classic Sing, Sing Sing) seemed to giggle with playful, inquisitive phrases over a lightly prancing left hand, and a mid-tempo Ain't She Sweet gradually unleashed a boogie feel under its mercurial melody line. Lazy River featured some of Carmichael's loosest and most eloquent playing, and the Fats Waller classic Honeysuckle Rose cleverly used double-taking delays, open space, a beat that surged and receded, and a final clamour of wild, chiming chords. Jazz archivism maybe - but delivered with skilful devotion.
At the Concorde Club, Eastleigh, Hampshire, on Wednesday. Details: 023 8061 3989.
