Review: An Evening of Elegant Songs at Ellington Jazz Club

An Evening of Elegant Songs by Adrian Galante & Leah Guelfi at Ellington Jazz Club 
Featuring the songs of Michel Legrand & the Bergmans
Friday, February 24, 2023

At the Ellington last Friday, one of WAAPA’s finest, clarinet player and pianist Adrian Galante, led an outstanding ensemble through an elegant evening of excellent jazz. With chanteuse Leah Guelfi, they presented a rich selection of songs by the legendary songwriting team Michel Legrand and the Bergmans.

Legrand was a French composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz pianist. He composed more than 200 film and TV scores in France and Hollywood. Nominated for some dozen apiece of Golden Globe, Grammy and Academy Awards, he won three of each. A consummate performer and band leader, his many concerts included two at the 1999 Perth Festival, one in a trio with local jazz legends Pete Jeavons (bass) and Michael Pigneguy (drums).

Alan and Marilyn Bergman wrote music and lyrics for stage, screen and TV. In a career spanning seven decades, they won four Emmys, three Oscars, and two Grammys. Their songs have been performed by a who’s who of singers including Sinatra, Streisand, Sarah Vaughn and Diana Krall.

The Bergmans began writing lyrics to Legrand’s film scores in the late 60s. Nominated for the Best Song Oscar each year from 1969 to 1971, they won in 1969 with their first composition together The Windmills of Your Mind. After a ten year hiatus, they teamed up again in the early 80s to work notably on the movies Best Friends and Yentl, for which they again won an Oscar.

These film scores were the field from which the Galante/Guelfi collaboration flowered.

We were warned at the top of the show that the selection was all ballads so were in for an evening of pensive music. It didn’t work out that way. Once Galante’s improvisational impulse took hold, the music took off and was anything but slow and reflective.

The flight began on the second of the instrumentals with which they opened, Watch What Happens. The only swing piece Legrand ever wrote, Galante (clarinet), backed by Jackson van Ballegooyen (piano), former golf-pro Danny Moss Jr (double bass) and Pete Evans (drums), delivered an extended improvisation. A generous band leader, Galante gave each player the space and support to soar. He enhanced their solos by sparring with them then left them alone to finish. It was very suave, especially Pete Evans’ drum solo.

Next Galante invited his old friend and fellow Sicilian, Leah Guelfi to join them. With a flamboyant flourish, she spun onto the stage as Van Ballegooyen quietly exited to leave Galante at the keys.

They began with a haunting duet, The Way He Makes Me Feel, originally sung by Guelfi’s idol, Barbra Streisand, in Yentl, before moving up tempo with the 1980s torch song How Do You Keep the Music Playing? Moss and Evans provided an exquisite rhythmic bed as Guelfi channelled her inner Whitney Houston and Galante gave his 1980s piano chops a solid work-out. It was electric, with the band ascending into the stratosphere.

They reached their peak in the next song, Summer Me, Winter Me, one of the many in the repertoire that referenced the seasons in its title. (‘A season of songs”, Galante quipped.) This featured on Legrand’s famous 1972 album with Sarah Vaughn, which included eight Bergman lyrics.

By this time Galante was edging the ether. Losing himself completely in the momentum of his muse he delivered a searing piano solo that saw him sometimes spontaneously jump to his feet as his hands flew up and down the keyboard. The band could only strap in for the ride but they all rose to the challenge, especially Guelfi as she sparred with the piano in an amazing improvised vocal.

The first set came to a soft landing on You Must Believe in Spring, a gentle piano-vocal duet, “the most beautiful lyric the Bergmans ever wrote."

In the second half the audience was again treated to a dynamic range of music — frenetic instrumentals to sensitive songs, duos to quintets — all of it sensational.

With Galante again on piano, they opened with the instrumental The Summer Knows from The Summer of ’42. The trio thoroughly deconstructed this beautiful tune before Guelfi returned to deliver Legrand and Bergmans’ most famous song The Windmills of My Mind.

In introducing it, Galante, a charming raconteur, highlighted the famous chess scene between Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in the original Thomas Crown Affair, the movie from which the song came. This is perhaps the only film to explore the erotic potential of that otherwise purely intellectual game. Galante and Guelfi captured this mood in their sensitive piano/vocal rendition. So much so that, at the end, Leah exclaimed, “Adrian you are an orchestra."

If Galante is an orchestra, Guelfi is a choir. She proved as much on their next duet Once You’ve Been in Love, another track from the Legrand/Vaughn album, also covered by ‘Babs’ Streisand.

To loud applause, Van Ballegooyen was invited back onto the stage (“Poor Jackson, I told him him he’d only be playing three songs"). The quintet launched into an extended jam on Pieces of Dreams, another Oscar nomination. This not only saw the vox and clarinet spar, but also featured great solos by both Adrian and Jackson. “Come blow your horn," Leah cried.

The next song, What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life, was dedicated to the recently departed Burt Bacharach. It too was nominated for an Oscar but lost to the Bacharach/David classic Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head. Guelfi’s vocal on this gentle ballad rippled down your spine.

After this, she briefly left the stage so the trio could play what has come to be known as ‘the national anthem of Adrian,’ I Will Wait For You. It began adagio with Galante solo on the keys then rose in tempo as Evans and Moss joined it, running all the way up to allegro, then down and up at will. Both very funny and a virtuoso performance, the audience were left wondering ‘how the hell does he do that?’ The trio clearly had a ball in a performance worthy of Carnegie Hall.

Guelfi returned for the grand finale, A Piece of Sky, another gentle one. But the audience wanted more. The resounding applause drew the core quartet back for an improvised encore. Having run through their entire Legrand repertoire, they had to think what to play, finally settling on another Bacharach tribute. With a flourish of arpeggios, (“You’re Legranding it up, Adrian!"), they ran through the first verse and chorus of Bacharach’s signature song The Look of Love. It was a fitting way to taxi this magnificent aircraft back into its hangar.

By pure chance, Friday’s show was held on what would have been Michel Legrand’s 91st birthday. The work-out Galante, Guelfi, Evans, Moss and Van Ballegooyen gave his compositions was a fitting birthday tribute. You could imagine the maestro smiling in his grave, certain in the knowledge that his music is living on in very strong hands.

Perth audiences are fortunate that Adrian Galante doesn’t like cold weather. To pursue his musical career, he relocated to New York in November last year. But the rain and snow soon got to him, hence his return for a brief season of shows with various ensembles in an array of Perth venues. He is playing every night until he flies out at the start of next week. Catch him if you can at The Ellington this Friday. Even if he becomes the international star his talent deserves, he plans to return to Perth every summer. That will be a season of songs to look out for.

IAN LILBURNE

Photos by Alan Holbrook