There will be no prizes for guessing what inspired me to listen to this album in the first place. That would have been a certain Prom on 19 July 2008, which featured the Nigel Kennedy Quintet playing many of the songs from its recent recording. Having enjoyed a wonderful evening on that occasion, my first reaction was to want to hear more of the same.
But whatever A Very Nice Album does deliver, it is not the same as what one might hear live, and that is all to the good. With the Nigel Kennedy Quintet consisting of electric violin, tenor sax, piano, bass and drums, it delivers a wonderful blend of easy listening, jazz, blues and improvisation. Surprisingly little is lost through this not being a live performance – which too often we assume is the only place where 'jamming' can succeed – and much, much more is gained. The sound is more rounded and multi-faceted than that which I heard at the Prom. It is as if, with no direct incentive to entertain an audience, there is less need to play out certain lines for maximum impact, which can affect the balance of the performance.
The two CDs in this double album are entitled Melody and Invention respectively. These titles highlight the spectrum of genres that the music covers, although, whilst there is more improvisation on the second CD, the difference between the songs on each side is not always clear-cut.
Melody gets off to a cracking start with Donovan, a tribute to a man who 'joined the folk music and the rock music' like no other. In this, a beautiful violin melody, in which the strings really soar, is gradually joined by the other instruments which then take on the melody themselves. The piece as a whole feels both like a multi-faceted journey, and one giant crescendo from start to (almost the) finish. When the playing is at full throttle it produces a wonderful echoing effect, before the piece suddenly comes back down to where it started. Invention has some equally strong numbers, including its Intro, which interestingly sounds reminiscent of The Specials' hit, Ghost Town, Cloud, which features some interesting improvisation on the piano, and 15 Stones with its happy rhythms and folk style.
The album, however, does have its weaker moments. Though I may be in a minority, I simply don't enjoy Kennedy's blues singing as demonstrated here in Boo Boooz Blooooze, and some of the verbal presentations which would have worked so well live suddenly feel stilted. When Kennedy declares in Donovan that he has finished the intro early and so is just going to carry on talking, you are more likely to wonder why he didn't just record it again than to laugh. Some of the songs also last too long (ten minutes in one case) although these are successfully counter-balanced by five Transitoires, interspersed throughout the album and lasting around ninety seconds each.
And so, overall, listening to this album is a highly enjoyable experience. Nigel Kennedy has long been acclaimed as one of the finest classical violinists in the world, but it took longer for his skill in performing in the 'jazz' genre to be recognised as being on a par. With everything on it being written and arranged by Kennedy himself, A Very Nice Album reveals that we should also be recognising him for the incredible composer of such works that he is.
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