Swing that Music: Tom Burlinson, Emma Pask, Ed Wilson & The All Star Big Band

Post

Subscribe

Fri 08 Feb 2019

In "Swing that Music" Emma Pask told us the story of how as a 16-year-old she was "discovered" by James Morrison leading to her being his lead singer for nearly 25 years.



She has sung in front of 80.000 people and a recent Emma Pask album was number one on the Jazz charts for many weeks. That training showed. Her voice ranged from mellow, and sultry to scatting like Ella Fitzgerald and belting it out like Liza Minelli.

In some ways, the show was an Ed Wilson special – all of the songs arranged by him, as he played his trombone with the other twenty or so members of his Big Band.



Ed is a legend – working with Australians like Marcia Hines and Ricky May, featuring at the London Palladium, and arranging music for Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Liza Minelli, Tony Bennett and Tom Jones. He also had gigs arranging music for army bands around Australia. And the Big Band was wonderful.

He can be quite outrageous – sharing with us that he always gets a standing ovation for "this next number" and would we want to take the risk of breaking the chain? Then he played and sang "Hey Jude" as the audience sang along, clapped and at the end happily gave him his standing ovation.

This was an evening where, given Ed's arrangements, the old standards of the thirties and forties happily mingled with more modern songs, all given the big band treatment.

Standouts? The Big Band unflappable "safe pair of hands'" rendition of "In the Mood". Ed's "Hey Jude", Emma Pask's sultry "Georgia" and her big-voiced "Mack the Knife".

And then there was Tom Burlinson – clearly not concerned about being upstaged by the star quality surrounding him. Burlinson is very much the unflappable safe pair of hands. More the crooner than the "belter" he was a pleasant counterpoint to Emma – and his rendition of "Mr Bojangles" showed that he can "belt" with the best of them.

The evening was clearly "art concealing art" as both soloists were so well rehearsed that they were able to coordinate their body movements to the rhythm and drum beats of the band which always complimented and never drowned them. We were seeing and hearing the best of the best.

Ed Wilson is 74, and Tom Burlinson is 56. Looking around the capacity audience, I suspect that the majority was in that range and probably knew most of the words of most of the songs.

And, very clearly, they had a great evening.

Your aged reviewer left the Concert Hall with a spring in his step and lots of songs in his head.

#music
#brisbane_city
#shows
#theatre
#february
#february
!date 08/02/2019 -- 08/02/2019
%wnbrisbane