Shetland-Music.com

THE TRIO of Omar Sosa, Marque Gilmour and Dhafer Youssef played to a packed Lerwick Town Hall last Thursday night and I for one was mightily impressed by what I saw and heard.

When the concert was over I couldn't believe that we had been sitting there for an hour and a half . The time passed by so easily listening to some of the best live music I have heard this year. As part of Davie Gardner's swansong from Shetland Arts this was an excellent gig to finish with.

Here was a band that combined three acoustic elements - piano, drums and vocals ­ with electronica and achieved startling results.

The first track, Iyawo, set the tone for the night by starting with electronic riffing created by the band, using samples and effects pedals, from which came a rhythm and then the melody.

Omar Sosa created sounds by banging and plucking the strings inside the Steinway grand piano and the electronic effects took these sounds to another place.

The singing of Dhafer Youssef was sublime and sounded like a monk or the Muslim call to prayer. I would love to have heard him singing without the microphone. I don't know if there was some electronic trickery going on but the further he got from the microphone point his voice still seemed to be as loud as it was when he was right next to it. I couldn't really make out the oud, the traditional middle-Eastern lute, that Dhafer was playing but that could have been to do with where I was sitting.

Marque Gilmour on drums and the most electronic equipment held the show together with excellent drumming, switching from using brushes to sticks and alternating from fierce barrages to softness depending on the mood of the track. He also switched to playing a Chapman Stick, made famous by bassist Tony Levin. This is played with both hands tapping along the fretboard, meaning that Marque could play bass lines at the same time as playing melody.

Each performer had four songs each in the set that was played and I would like know how much time they had together before this tour started to learn up the set as they seemed to intuitively know where the music was going, but then I suppose that is what makes great jazz musicians.

They played with so much enjoyment of the music and how they were playing off each other and this came back on to the audience, who were asked to join in on a couple of occasions.

Although the sound was excellent the only criticism I heard was to do with the ability to see the performance which the video screen that was installed was supposed to alleviate.

I thought the video screen worked well and being able to see inside the piano as Omar played brought the performance that little bit closer to understanding where the sounds were coming from.

Let's hope that the Jazz Club can continue to bring such excellent artists to Shetland with the aid of Shetland Arts and that the Steinway wasn't too badly banged about.

Review by Jimmy Carlyle. Copyright Shetland Times 2006.