Nigel Kennedy - Kennedy Meets Gershwin (2018) [Hi-Res]

It is not so much a question of Nigel Kennedy meeting Gershwin with some “Maestro Gershwin, I presume” than of Gershwin hitting upon Kennedy in the New York jungle with a “Mister Kennedy, I presume, playing some Gershwin”. The present album is as much by the now classic explorer of jazz-cum-classical music as by Kennedy and, at that, by his jam session colleagues, to wit guitarists Howard Alden and Rolf ‘die Kobra’ Bussalb, bassist Tomasz ‘Insomnia’ Kupiec, as well as flutist David Heath. Hence the fact that though the booklet states all pieces are “arranged by Nigel Kennedy”, the input of all these jazz soloists is nothing less than seminal. Let us say he has arranged the accompaniment sections, written for strings and sometimes piano and harpsichord – both of which Kennedy plays himself, by the bye. His rewritings are epitomised by three main ingredients: the fusion of jazz and classical music, the beautiful melodic influences of Jewish culture and the unique energy of New York City – with a further (and obviously extemporaneous) exploration into Pink Floyd style rock for one of the numbers. A further ingredient is doubtless Kennedy’s personal acquaintanceship with Stéphane Grappelli when he was around 14 years old. Given “that this music evolved as a live project”, writes Kennedy in the liner notes, he “continued along these lines in the studio, thus: no glorious reverb, so that the music is and sounds like five cats playing live in a room. This is the old style of recording, more similar to some of [his] favourite recordings from the 30s and 40s.” Of course, Gershwin would not necessarily always recognise his pieces but certainly he’d have loved the way these musicians have jammed around the notes.