CLAIRE MARTIN AND A QUARTET OF CELLOS

Along with collapsing toilet seats, the beginnings of a cold, a very painful trapped nerve moment involving my right knee that convinced me that old age was finally upon me, and at least the vaguest possibility of a holiday booking, Sunday also brought along with it an evening trip into town to attend a jazz concert.

This was at the Royal Northern College of Music and involved us finally using up the credit we had acquired by our last minute cancellation of attending an event at around the time my mother passed away.

She was just hanging on back then, but didn’t look like she was going to make it, and having long pre-booked concert tickets – I think for an accompanied film screening, but I don’t remember now – seemed like a bad idea at the time and, sadly, we were proved correct in that notion.

Anyway, what with forgetfulness, and busy times, and so forth, we kind of forgot about them, until we had a sudden recollection a few weeks ago which was accompanied by a realization that the year that we had in which to redeem them was rapidly approaching the “up” stage, having flown by in almost indecent haste, and with me achieving very little as it sped miserably by.

Anyway, rather at random, we picked Claire Martin’s concert out of the brochure as looking the most appealing, despite not really knowing that much about her, or indeed, what the concert was likely to involve.

Oh yes, I know now that she has an O.B.E., and presents shows on the radio, but last night, as we shuffled into the studio theatre, we knew nothing at all about what we were in for and, to be perfectly honest, when the Montpellier Cello Quartet strolled onto the stage, I was beginning to worry that something alarmingly avant-garde was afoot, especially as I have a little-publicised (i.e. I mentioned it here a couple of times) aversion to “bloody fiddle music…” and these looked like bloody BIG fiddles to me.

Happily, after a rather excellent rendition of “Invasion” Claire herself arrived on stage to greet what were obviously her fans (well, they all seemed to have heard of her before anyway) and it turned out that this new fusion of chamber music and jazz worked rather well, and Claire Martin’s smoky vocals ran through the card of hits both old and new for the better part of two and a half hours, and we drifted out into the chilly September evening clutching a newly purchased, but unsigned… (I’m far too shy for that sort of interaction) CD in our hands, and feeling rather satisfied at our sublime choice of evening out.