Long time readers may remember that I discovered Zoe Rahman back in 2006 when she was a finalist for the Mercury Prize. Since then I have been playing Melting Pot fairly regularly, but I haven’t kept up with what she has been doing. I have enough to do keeping up with books, and quality Jazz musicians, sadly, get no more media attention than quality science fiction writers.

Yesterday, however, I noticed a tweet from my friend Jon Turney saying that he was going to see Rahman in concert in Bradford-on-Avon. That’s only a few miles away from me, so I jumped at the chance and went over to join Jon and his wife for the evening.

Before commenting on the gig I should note that we had dinner in a restaurant I’ve not tried before. Orient Express seems a bit of an odd name for a quality restaurant because it makes it sound like a fast food joint. It will appeal to Kevin, however, train fan that he is, and I’m delighted to say that the food was excellent, good value, and beautifully presented. I suspect that Kevin and I will be eating there if he’s ever able to come back here.

So why, exactly, is a Mercury Prize finalist playing gigs in Bradford-on-Avon? Well, because of the Wiltshire Music Centre, a purpose-built concert hall opened in 1998. It only seats 300 people, and it was pretty much full for Rahman, but that’s OK for many of the top quality musicians that it caters for. Good music is often a minority taste. According to the website the Centre has “the finest acoustic outside London” (that’s a quote from Sean Rafferty of BBC Radio 3). Crucially it also has a really nice Steinway piano. Rahman used it when she toured with Courtney Pine a while back, and liked it so much that she booked the venue again for her own tour.

The downside of the venue is that Bradford is built on the side of a steep hill leading down to the Avon. The railway station is at the bottom, and the Music Centre is at the top. They really need something like a San Francisco cable car going up that hill. Thankfully Jon had come over from Bristol in a car. Now that I know the venue is there, and how good it is, I’m rather more interested in getting my own transport.

Most of the concert featured music from Rahman’s new album, Kindred Spirits. Rahman is half-Bengali, and that influence is clear in her music. However, she is also one quarter Irish, and lately she has been incorporating that tradition as well. Jazz, of course, is neither Bengali nor Irish, and yet the end result works beautifully, and makes Rahman’s music unique. Interestingly one of the tunes she picked, written by the great Bengali polymath and Nobel Prize winner, Rabindranath Tagore, is also based on an Irish melody.

The band for the tour comprises Davide Mantovani on double bass, Gene Calderazzo on drums and Rahman’s brother, Idris, on woodwind. Jon mentioned that he was looking forward to seeing Calderazzo perform before the gig, and I can see why. He has wonderfully constrained and expressive control of his kit. There’s none of the “I am a mighty warrior who will beat these drums into submission” with Calderazzo, he just sits there channeling the flow of the music through his body and into the instrument. At times you can’t even see him moving. Idris Rahman mainly played clarinet, and did a fine job of interpreting an Irish jig on that instrument. Personally, however, I loved the old saxophone that he used on one piece.

The band for the album is much the same except that Oli Hayhurst plays bass and Courtney Pine guests on one track, using an alto flute for that Irish jig. I bought a copy of the album during the interval (Rahman does the merch chick work herself — surely she could find some fans to do it like Marjorie and I did for Jonathan Coulton.) At the start of the second half of the gig she announced that she’d found a CD that had fallen out of the packing, and she didn’t want anyone to go home and find theirs was missing. Sure enough, it was mine. Thank you again, Zoe.

If you’d like to see Rahman yourself, and I highly recommend it, you can find the remainder of the tour dates here.