Essi­ba Small

It is a pity that so few got to ex­pe­ri­ence Jazz in Ju­ly, which fea­tured head­line act Cheryl Pep­sii Ri­ley, last week­end. Pre­sent­ed by Vic­to­ry In­ter­na­tion­al and held at the Queen's Hall, St Ann's, on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day nights, the show al­so fea­tured the likes of Vaugh­nette Big­ford, Glen­da Col­lens, Theron Shaw, Dane Gul­ston, R'kar­do St'von and Mun­gal Patasar. The emp­ty seats in the large hall were hard to miss. But what the show lost in pa­trons it cer­tain­ly made up for in per­for­mance.

The Sun­day night line up got start­ed by Big­ford, whose set in­clud­ed Ralph Mc Don­ald's Tradewinds, Bil­lie Hol­i­day's Good Morn­ing Heartache and her trib­ute to Michael Jack­son, the late singer's La­dy in my Life, giv­en a con­tem­po­rary jazz treat­ment.

Big­ford, who was backed by Theron Shaw and his band, lat­er shared that she arranged the song and liked the way it turned out. Pan­nist Nigel Su­per­sad al­so held the spot­light on the night and played a set that in­clud­ed two of his own com­po­si­tions, in­clud­ing the dance­able No Mat­ter What. All would agree, how­ev­er, that the night be­longed to Ri­ley, who, with her band Hot Choco­late, had the rapt at­ten­tion of all from the minute she stepped on stage to when the cur­tain closed.

Dur­ing her hour-long per­for­mance, she ren­dered a mix of pop­u­lar hits and jazz stan­dards, all of which showed off her vo­cal range. Via a flaw­less sound sys­tem, Ri­ley de­liv­ered Ni­na Si­mone's Four Women with the sin­cer­i­ty and pas­sion of a sto­ry­teller. She then in­ject­ed a dose of R&B to Bon­nie Raitt's I Can't Make You Love Me and had the au­di­ence singing along with her to Dawn Penn's You Don't Love Me (No No No). Of course Ri­ley couldn't leave the stage with­out singing her 1988 hit Thanks for My Child, the song writ­ten by Bow Legged Lou of Full Force that made her a star.

Back­ing band Hot Choco­late too didn't dis­ap­point and fea­tured strong with the jazz stan­dard Night in Tunisia, in which Ri­ley was a pow­er­house vo­cal­ly. Be­tween songs, a chat­ty Ri­ley made the au­di­ence laugh with her sto­ries about love and re­la­tion­ships. She al­so in­tro­duced Dean James, her band's drum­mer, whom she said was born in T&T. Like Big­ford, Ri­ley al­so paid trib­ute to the late Jack­son with the song I Can't Help It and the Jack­son Five hit I Want You Back. Vic­to­ry In­ter­na­tion­al's Stacey Weekes Co­dring­ton said the show was in trib­ute to her late fa­ther, ca­lyp­son­ian Lord Blakie. She wants the con­cert to be an an­nu­al event.