Nigel Kennedy Quintet,with guest star Jeff Beck

×

Nigel Kennedy Quintet,with guest star Jeff Beck

Close

Nigel Kennedy Quintet,with guest star Jeff Beck
MP3 @192 kbps | Covers | 45.3 MB
BBC Proms 2008 [no label, 1CD]
Live at the Royal Albert Hall, July 19, 2008.

Nigel Kennedy might be known for Vivaldi’s Four Seasons but the violinist has his rock side and is no stranger to either Jimi Hendrix or The Doors. Earlier in the evening, Kennedy had performed Elgar’s Violin Concerto but for the later part of the show, for a moment there, one would have thought it was Pat Metheny and his Synclavier, for that was how Kennedy came across. Unlike the earlier classical portion, here Kennedy weaved between jazz, folk and rock. The highlight and surprise for the audience was when Kennedy brought Jeff Beck on stage. Allaboutjazz.com reported: “Nigel was particularly keen for me to do the Hills of Saturn solo,” said Beck, who played the track on his Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. John Fordham wrote in The Guardian: “As an improviser, Kennedy has an originality of spontaneous line and rhythmic attack that most classical players lack in this context, and several of the pieces worked up a fierce, guitar-mimicking, Hendrix-like momentum… A romantic ballad dedicated to 1960s folkie Donovan was sublime, and so was the darkly elegiac Hills of Saturn - the latter richly harmonised with Tomasz Grzegorski’s tenor sax and Adam Kowalewski’s bass. Surprise guest Jeff Beck conjured an astonishing panpipe-like sound from his guitar.”