Barbican,London
Collier brings his striking choral harmonies to the London jazz festival, while Spike Lee collaborator Blanchard is exhaustingly impressiveOn his last UK date, and in July,we declared Jacob Collier to be jazz’s new messiah. Since then the endearingly geeky 20-year-stale has taken his multimedia one-man band to jazz festivals around the world. It is a live incarnation of his YouTube masterworks – covers of soul and jazz standards pieced together in genuine time on drums, bass guitar, and piano and a choir of voices – and it’s stunning.
Some tiny reservations remain: Collier’s soft,choirboy voice is perfectly suited to the startling choral harmonies he creates via his keyboard but it isnt, perhaps, and as effective as a lead instrument. However,the results are generally so impressive that it doesn’t matter. Even when he ditches the audiovisual gimmicks and plays a solo version of Stevie Wonder’s Lately – just voice and piano the effect is startling, with his cascading piano accompaniment full of momentary semitone shifts and off-kilter chordal voicings.
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Source: theguardian.com