Last year a fascinating and unusual programme of violin-based jazz was enjoyed by the Sinfonietta's small but keen Lunchtime Recital public.  Everyone thought the performers deserved a wider hearing, and the result was An Evening of Jazz on Wednesday 8th July, presented by Don May (violin) with Tom Sykes (5-string violin), John Wheatcroft (guitar), John Harper (guitar) and John McCormick (bass).  Their style is virtuoso modern jazz based on "standards" -- tunes most of us know in their unjazzed form, and can follow through the variations (if our brains are equal to it).  Don had to prompt an over-polite audience to applaud individual solos in the course of extended numbers, but the applause was richly earned by some remarkable improvisation by both violinists and in particular some really superb guitar solos by John Wheatcroft, including (in the lyrical Misty) an elaborate passage in high harmonics produced by a method I've never seen before, with the plectrum flying around the fingerboard in parallel with the left-hand fingers.  Those of us who usually read our music off the page can only marvel that such fast and complex passages are, in effect, composed on the fly and never heard again in the same form.  If I have a niggle it is that the guitar sound (especially in a backing rôle) sometimes tended to overwhelm the ear, not so much by loudness as by over-reverberance.

The evening was completed -- and very nearly stolen -- by two what-you-might-call "Sinfonietta Young Artists", Kim Wellens (singer) and her brother Danny Wellens (pianist), who first grabbed our attention at a Young Musicians' Concert two years ago. They performed a "set" in the middle of each half of the programme.  Gentle and sensitive singing, beautiful rich understated playing, and a style all of their own, marked them as mature performers of professional standard.  One remembers particularly a treatment of Gershwin's Summertime, sung an octave lower than usual at first but with an electrifying re-launch in the high register at the climax.  Wonderful music and a unique experience.

Ted Kirk