Hugh Laurie at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival - review

Hugh Laurie at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. Photography: Marilyn Kingwill

There is joke a musicians': If you want to start a jazz million, with two million. It is not a theory which is been tested much because players with this kind of good start occur often but Hugh Laurie, former star comic and, now, the better actor paid on US TV for his role in the series medical homemay be about to offer a moment of truth.

Laurie, an early-jazz education and fan of blues, triumphantly closed the Festival of Jazz of Cheltenham 2011 supported by a punchy Quintet dominated by uninhibited Canadian guitarist Kevin Breit and material of his first album, Let speak them. It is a very different notion of jazz of mostly contemporary and often more sharp variations that shaped the six day event.

But Laurie has delivered with respect to long-gone original art as Jelly Roll Morton, Ledbetter, Leroy Carr and JB Lenoir, more competent sideman on piano and guitar skills, instincts, and a player in the art of tribute without caricature in some fine songwhich rekindled a often abandoned to archivists and music lovers.

"If I explode in a wet splash of ecstasy,"Laurie warned initially the audience, "these gentlemen behind me will take care of all your musical needs"."."

They did not need, but often reaches critical temperatures even when music. The first match was a theme of Thelonious Monk trad-jazzily adapted but only that and a piano and the interpretation of Summertime of contemporary notions of jazz soprano sax.

Infirmary a dramatic St James' which begins with piano delicate strings and become a roar in which Vincent Henry tenor erupted which would echo total cacophony of strings of slide guitar, a blues can Ledbetter, supported by the pace troubled balefully of Bright, an eerie Joshua Fit The Battle of Jericho (supported only by the ringing sounds of guitareTom-Tom thumps and Laurie of stamping feet) and a patient dedication Careless Love, all have shown determined how Laurie was the focal point of the songs and not himself. Let them talk about James Booker, and Professor Longhair rocker for a recall, a tour de force very unexpected for liquidation.

Laurie show contrasts sharply with most of the offers on one of the classiest and most eclectic United Kingdom jazz festivals, but it certainly was a big noise out, for a complete event of the more eloquent.

In the Sunday Sun, shadowy monochrome characters jazz stereotypes Saxes swelling in cellars have dissipated by turning kids prospectus on the grass, while Hendrix guitar arrangements resembling the distance ripped ragged horn sections, merrily falsification of thus spoke Zarathustra Strauss, and the silver, the Rainbow hair and hair non-aux chosen their way through the capitals, sportscasters, and bands.

Jamie Cullum, the Director of the festival guest, was liquidated with a rare Sunday one-man show and her first concert since the birth of his daughter Sophie Dahl Lyra and that in March. "It was only the second time that I've been out of the House since then," Cullum said ironically at a worship audience. "And it is simulcast in 75 cinemas in six countries."

In two sets in which he visibly unwound from a nervous start, Cullum irritated - originals, covers of pop and standards, with an account of aspiration high and dry of Radiohead, and classic spring can really Hang you Up The Most of Fran Landesman- Hardie but successfully join intimate ballads of Human Beatbox - made salient.

Earlier in the day, competitor of Mercury Prize 2010 Kit Downes and his powerful sextet had explored Scandinavian folk songs, contemporary bebop and unifying contemporary blues, and former keyboardist of Brand New Heavies Neil Cowley had mixed jackhammering rock-piano chords with swing slinky and the send of a String Quartet.

Norwegian Tord Gustavsen, a hitmaker very different to his homeland to barely hit music acoustic grounds tiny, slick, brushed cymbal gently, quietly humming parts of the double bass, then played in a epatee atmosphere, such as Church, to which his saxophonist Jan Garbarek-like Tore Brunborg was perfectly suited.

And, despite a very powerful UK and the presence of the northern European in Cheltenham, the harmonic String Quartet - a supergroup compromising the pianist Jason Moran, saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Eric Harland, rubbed home a message unambiguously on the lasting muscle and more openAmerican jazz lyricism.

‧ This article was amended on May 4, 2011. The original called Canadian guitarist Kevin Bright. This has been corrected.