Celebrating Ella & Oscar show for Eden Court in May.
Singer Tina May and Scottish pianist Brian Kellock bring their Celebrating Ella & Oscar programme to Eden Court on Sunday, May 14 as part of a tour to mark jazz singing legend Ella Fitzgerald’s centenary.
Fitzgerald is widely recognised as the greatest jazz singer of all time and her 1975 recording with pianist Oscar Peterson has long been an inspiration to the award-winning, Gloucestershire-born May.
“I think most jazz singers will have listened to and learned something from Ella,” says May. “The Ella & Oscar album is really a masterclass with great songs like Midnight Sun and April in Paris, and I’m really lucky to have Brian, who is one of the best pianists in the business, accompanying me on this tour.”
May knows about April in Paris, having been a regular visitor to the French capital since she spent a year there as a student. A Parisian student revue, with impressionist Rory Bremner no less, led to May singing with her first jazz group, which included the great jazz drummer and Paris resident Kenny Clarke. She has gone on to sing with other jazz luminaries including pianists Stan Tracey and Ray Bryant and she recorded with Bryant at the legendary Rudy Van Gelder Studio in New Jersey, scene of countless classic recording sessions, with Van Gelder himself at the controls.
Her most recent album, Café Paranoia, celebrates the great singer Mark Murphy, who died in 2015, but she always returns to the songs she learned from Ella Fitzgerald.
“They’re timeless, really,” she says, “and because they’re so well written, there’s always something new to be discovered in them.”
Celebrating Ella & Oscar performed by Singer Tina May and Scottish pianist Brian Kellock they play Eden Court, Inverness on the 14th of May.
TICKETS can be bought from here.
