The chamber-recital treatment of jazz as fragile fine china became a familiar sound during the 1990s - a by-product of the well-intentioned urge to secure cultural status for a historically marginalised music. Though Regina Carter, the jazz violin virtuoso from Detroit, might have been predisposed to it because of her instrument's history, she has been a refreshingly independent spirit among tradition-based younger players: her music is an engaging mix of classical perfectionism and a swing-player's exuberance. Her reverence for tradition, however, seemed more in evidence on her opening night at Ronnie Scott's.
Opening for Carter is a new UK band showcasing the hard-bop partnership of trumpeter Damon Brown and saxophonist Ed Jones. The sidemen occasionally sounded as if they were only just getting to know each other, but they delivered an attractive blend of new and old material, often slyly catching the 1960s hard-bop's habit of stealthy horn exchanges against a purring rhythm section, swelling to wailing climaxes.
Carter's regular band once again included the excellent conga player and percussionist Mayra Casales - and there were familiar items in the repertoire too, notably Milt Jackson's For Someone I Love, which the band plays as a Latin swinger with vocal choruses. Pianist David Budway took the volume down so low in the opening soft waltz that Carter had the audience where she wanted them - craning to hear the slightest sound - when she began the first pure, high whispers of her solo, before it developed into the vivaciously shuffling swing that she is most at home with.
A gliding Black Orpheus theme turned into a light-footed jive full of slurs and inquisitively curling notes from the leader (The Music Goes Round and Round), smooth Latin undulations gently rocked a Fauré pavanne and some rougher ones arrived with For Someone I Love - the set ending enigmatically with a tiptoe around Ravel. A little more fire and bite would have been welcome, and Carter's massive potential seems not to have been fulfilled as much as it might have. But what she has is unquestionably a premier-league skill, gracefully applied.
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