Nigel A Camp­bell

For the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive Fri­day in Oc­to­ber, there has been an op­por­tu­ni­ty for en­hanced en­ter­tain­ment in Port-of-Spain that fea­tures a min­gling and in­ter­face of jazz per­for­mance and west­ern clas­si­cal mu­sic per­son­nel.

The Clas­si­cal Mu­sic De­vel­op­ment Foun­da­tion's pro­duc­tion, On a Lighter Note at the Lit­tle Carib The­atre on Oc­to­ber 10, show­cased light clas­si­cal songs and jazz vo­cal favourites by col­oratu­ra so­pra­no Na­talia Dop­well ac­com­pa­nied by the Dom­i­nant Sev­enth Ca­lyp­so Jazz Band led by trum­peter Rel­lon Brown.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this three-night event was avoid­ed by a wider au­di­ence on the gala pre­miere night there­fore deny­ing the per­form­ers a crit­i­cal ova­tion and mea­sure of what works and what does not.

The 90-minute show was a cel­e­bra­tion of the film and mu­si­cal the­atre songs of the Gersh­wins (Em­brace­able You, Sum­mer­time, I've Got Rhythm), Cole Porter (Be­gin the Be­guine, I've Got You Un­der My Skin), An­drew Lloyd-Web­ber (Half a Mo­ment), as were Dop­well's takes of the show tunes from The Scar­let Pim­per­nel (On­ly Love) and Jeeves (Half a Mo­ment) that al­lowed her to re­lax in­to a mi­lieu that de­fined ex­cel­lence. The show was al­so a nod to the style of "crossover clas­si­cal" made pop­u­lar by an­oth­er di­va, Sarah Bright­man.

The open­ing song, Man of La Man­cha (I, Don Quixote) was ded­i­cat­ed to ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh; maybe a sub­tle jab at his soli­tary de­ter­mi­na­tion and ide­al­ism against all odds, but an apt song choice with a mes­sage that was not missed by the small au­di­ence.

West End and Broad­way mu­si­cal the­atre songs, and tunes from movie mu­si­cals were fod­der for jazz singers in the past.

El­la Fitzger­ald and Nat King Cole set tem­plates for the re-in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the the­atre song to jazz stan­dard. Dop­well was up for the chal­lenge of phras­ing the songs in a jazz con­text, in­fus­ing her per­son­al­i­ty in­to these songs. Stormy Weath­er, fea­tured in the lat­er film of the same name, was a stand­out that night.

Na­talia Dop­well sings pleas­ant­ly, how­ev­er her con­nec­tion with Dom­i­nant Sev­enth Ca­lyp­so Jazz Band was al­most non-ex­is­tent, seem­ing­ly un­fa­mil­iar like two new­ly met co-work­ers. The jux­ta­po­si­tion of clas­si­cal train­ing and jazz tech­nique and per­for­mance re­vealed the fis­sure be­tween the in­ter­pre­tive styles of the two gen­res.

Jazz is in­ter­ac­tion. It's a con­ver­sa­tion. It felt like two con­certs, which from all ap­pear­ances, it may have been. Dop­well left the stage for the band to per­form, and on­ly on a cou­ple songs were ex­tend­ed im­pro­vised so­los per­formed.

Dom­i­nant Sev­enth, a septet fea­tur­ing a young horn sec­tion of Brown, Je­re­my Cha­toor on sax and flute and Joshua Pasqual on trom­bone opened the con­cert with the stan­dard Green Dol­phin Street and in­ter­spersed the show with three oth­er in­stru­men­tal pieces in­clud­ing a new take on the 1991 Melanie Hud­son song, I Will Al­ways Be There For You.

The pauci­ty of au­di­ences to ac­knowl­edge this per­for­mance and oth­ers like this such as the de­but of The Keate Street Jazz Octet the week be­fore is a sig­nal that ei­ther mar­ket­ing ef­forts are falling on deaf ears or the road to trav­el for the pro­fes­sion­al per­former is long and lone­ly. On a lighter note, on a dif­fer­ent stage, this should be a hit.