Cleo Laine
Cleo Laine
Posted: 28 Mar 2011
Cleo Laine
The Sage Gateshead
27 March 2011
Picture by Sven Arnstein
There could have been no finer way of closing the seventh Gateshead International Jazz Festival than with a superlative concert by Dame Cleo Laine. Starting with Shakespeare- ‘If music be the food of love, play on’ - this was certainly a Cleo of whom it can be said ‘Age shall not wither her.’ At 83 she may walk with a stick and need to sit down for some numbers but the voice is still amazingly undiminished. A richly deserved standing ovation came at the end of a set of well over two hours.
Assisted by superb musicians most of whom had backed her for almost three decades, this was a band at ease with itself, the banter was good, the stage presence supreme and more than anything the music was world class for what has become a world class festival right here in the North East.
Cleo’s husband John Dankworth has passed away but with their son Alec Dankworth on double bass and their daughter Jacqui dueting with Cleo and performing her own set as part of the first half of the gig, this was very much a family affair.
Highlights included Jacqui Dankworth singing her father’s composition, ‘It happens quietly,’ Alec Dankworth ‘s rendition of Duke Ellington’s ‘Jack the Bear’ and just about everything Cleo Laine sang.
Returning after the break having swapped her black gown for a long traffic-light-red dress accompanied by a jacket so sparkling it might have been made from seventies style disco globes she launched into Ellington’s ‘I’m a lucky so-and-so’ but it was the packed Hall One that were feeling lucky. With ‘It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing’ sparkling as much as her jacket this a Cleo still with her ‘Va-Va Voom’ intact.
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