Edinburgh Jazz Festival: Carol Kidd Sings the Music of Judy Garland

Carol Kidd Sings the Music of Judy Garland, Queen’s Hall

*****

Some concerts are more personal than others. And the concert with which Carol Kidd closed the Edinburgh Jazz Festival on Sunday seemed a great deal more personal than the Gershwin show she gave in Glasgow earlier in the summer. Why? Because Sunday’s concert was a celebration of the songs of her first favourite singer, Judy Garland, and many of them were numbers she had never done in public before.

They weren’t necessarily the tunes that the rest of us would immediately associate with Garland but they made for a varied, unpredictable and delightful programme. Among the many highlights were Kidd’s superb duets with guitarist Nigel Clark, on Stormy Weather especially, and first time outings of a swinging Just in Time, which boasted one of a series of knockout solos by pianist Brian Kellock (pictured above, right, with Frank Perowsky and Carol Kidd), and a bossa take on Time After Time.

Indeed, the bossa was undoubtedly the rhythm of the night – and it was a Jobim song, How Insensitive, which stole the first half; guest star Frank Perowsky’s flute playing the icing on an already scrumptious cake.