Is it really exactly a year since we were last at the Almeida hearing Barb Jungr in concert? Last year she was there singing Bob Dylan on a Monday (July 23); last night she was back on a Tuesday, “a good night for some depressing material”, as she called it, to re-visit a repertoire of chansons that she last did “en masse” in 2001, when she had recorded her first album for the label she has been at home with ever since, Linn Records, of Brel, Ferre and Piaf. Now that umbrella of chansons also embraces material that she has also featured in subsequent collections, including the current Nina Simone tribute (Just Like a Woman - Hymn to Nina) and her 2005 album of songs previously recorded by Elvis Presley (Love Me Tender).
She kept warning us that it made for a very dense, intense collection of difficult songs; but Barb, as ever, brings both great personal warmth and such a richly heightened sense of drama and theatricality to them that she takes us on a dark journey with that material effortlessly.
I have often seen Barb in both cabaret and concert settings, from Pizza Express in Dean Street and Pizza on the Park to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival that both of us were at in 2006 (and from where her Australian accompanist Matthew Carey sent me a message on Facebook yesterday to send Barb love, but I forgot to - so I am doing so now!) But there’s something about a theatre stage, and particularly the Almeida with its resonant curved bare-brick rear wall and beautifully intimate auditorium, that Barb is uniquely suited to; she is an intrinsically theatrical performer who does material you actually want and need to concentrate on. Unlike at Ronnie Scott’s where I also saw her in January, proceedings are not interrupted (as I wrote here at the time) by constant streams of waiters passing by.
Mind you, not everyone was concentrating fully last night; a woman sitting near me was checking her text messages regularly. I find it simply astonishing that some audience members, who have committed after all to a live experience by coming out in the first place, then need to be simultaneously elsewhere. But perhaps I’m just not exposed to music audiences enough; certainly the Almeida anticipate a different kind of audience by printing two sets of times on the tickets, stating “Doors: 7.30pm; Concert: 8pm”, that doesn’t require spelling out on their usual fare here.
The devil is always in the detail; and this proves that they’ve thought carefully about who may be coming. Actually, Barb has a justifiably devoted following of fans as well as friends - amongst the latter, Eve Best was back for the second year running, as was fellow British jazz and cabaret performer Ian Shaw with whom Barb will also be appearing at Pizza Express on Dean Street on July 23 with their programme New York Stories. I also got a robust ticking off from Julian Clary at the bar for not liking Zorro — he’s a friend of director Christopher Renshaw — but then, as Julian also acknowledged, they’ve had enough good reviews elsewhere. I admire his sense of loyalty, but am intrigued that he should take my own negative response so personally. At least, however, we can agree on how wonderful Barb is!
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