By BRUCE DENNILL
Swingle Bells / Directed by Daniel Geddes / Teatro, Montecasino, Fourways, Johannesburg
Swing music speaks to the way the songs performed in that style feel – it makes you want to dance. It also refers to the way the music is played, with musicians accenting different parts of already jazzy patterns to give tunes swagger or suavity or whatever is required. And it traditionally makes a certain visual impression too, with tuxedos de rigueur, the horn section seated in banked rows – saxophones, then trombones and trumpets at the top – a set-up that both looks classy and means the layered sound hits the audience full in the face, opposite the rhythm section (piano, keyboard, guitar, upright bass, percussion and drums).
Those are the basics. If you want to stage a show that declares your love for the genre, all of that must be in place as the curtain rises, and if those elements are well done to begin with, it’s likely that the very least the production will offer is solid entertainment.
Swingle Bells, featuring Jonathan Roxmouth in front of the Johannesburg Big Band, begins at a level consistent with best swing specials most South African will be familiar with – lavish Vegas specials featuring Frank Sinatra and the like, watched over decades as part of holiday television programming – gives things a twist of local colour and a scattering of quality dad jokes and maintains or builds from there.
Jason Fritz’s set design, using candy cane-shaped LED screens and other large projections, is a festive explosion of Christmas colour and iconography that almost manages to keep up with the extravagant range of dinner jackets Roxmouth sports throughout the concert. Add to that a lighting design by Oliver Hauser – beautiful fittings that descend and ascend and change colour to frame and augment the performances, in addition to spots and gels and the more conventional theatre technology options – that should already have the next awards season wrapped up and just being in the room is a buzz.
The music is as striking, happily, with the overture introducing the sheer power of the Johannesburg Big Band as well as Adam Howard’s energetic, assured conducting. Roxmouth’s arrangements for a classily curated clutch of Christmas songs and associated music (Ave Maria is a particularly beautiful peripheral inclusion) are fantastic, adding freshness for listeners who don’t understand or care about the theory and testing the virtuosity of the band, which is saying something when considering the deserved reputations of such players as Rob Watson (drums), David Cousins (piano), Marcus Wyatt (trumpet), to – unfairly – highlight just a few of the musicians. Howard also provides a couple of the show’s highlights when he steps out from behind his podium to play his cornet, the instrument that put him on the road, as a child, to what is he is doing now as a producer, on stage and in studio. Guest vocalists Monique Steyn and Timothy Moloi both do well, with the former having a particularly pleasing tone.
But ultimately, Roxmouth owns the stage, guiding the flow with his patented patter and singing superbly throughout. He’s a ringmaster, including the band, his guests and the audience in rehearsed segments that have the light-hearted feel of improv and making light of the occasional unrehearsed moment – always part of live performance – so that there is no interruption in tone or continuity.
There are moments of intimacy among all the opulence that provide great emotional balance. Both Roxmouth and Howard, the piece’s core collaborators, dedicate pieces to their parents and there are flashes – unplanned, almost certainly – when Roxmouth, on hearing a certain musical phrase or watching a particular musician do something extraordinary, can’t wipe a goofy grin off his face. He’s a self-confessed sucker for Christmas joy, and watching him experience it spontaneously, and live, adds an extra sheen to proceedings.
A brilliantly put together and presented concert for anyone who responds to the holiday spirit or top-level musicianship, or both.
