The Other Woman
Adelaide Town Hall
Sunday 3 February 2008 - 7:30pm


Well Jazz Jazz Jazz give me lots of lovely Jazz!

Set in the back drop of the beautiful pipe organ of Adelaide Town Hall, we were presented with Deni Hines, James Morrison and their wonderfully talented big brass band.

When I heard that Deni Hines was performing Jazz, I kind of thought ok, she might also pipe out some of her pop as well, you remember hits like '(That word) L.O.V.E', I really couldnt picture her being able to pull off some Jazz songs. Not that I am much of a Jazz critic, because this was probably my first official Jazz gig.

Combined Deni and James Morrison performed songs such as 'Only Have Eyes For You', 'The Very Thought Of You', 'Its Just Too Damn Hot' and 'Someone to Watch Over Me'. All performed lovely and with such enthusiastic facial expressions from Deni.

One song that Deni and James performed that touched me was called 'Strange Fruit' by Billie Holliday. James introduced the song by proclaiming that it was a poem originally written by a Jewish teacher, who was so emotinally affected by a photo of linching of black man, penned the words to this haunting but captuvating song. Billie Holliday independantly recorded the song because no record company would allow it on their label, mostly due to the controversial nature of the lyrics. I have never heard the original version of this song, but was definatly moved by the words and emotion that Deni put into it.

This was my first performance seeing James Morrison live - I have seen him plenty of times on television, but have never really witnessed his personality. On stage he seemed like a very fun and down to earth person, he did tell a few shocker jokes but in all was very entertaining. He is obviously well known for his brilliant trumpet playing, but he proved that he is so much more than a man behind a brass instrument! He wrote the song for the show "Tired of Being the Other Woman" which was an entertaining piece, but he also gave the audience an insight into some of the technoligical advances in music. He performed on a digital trumpet, which was played like a trumpet but could make the sound of any other instrument, and he showed a keyboard that was voice activated (sorry I dont remember the technical names for these gadgets!)

James told the audience that he was an ambassador for a foundation named 'Hear the World' which was an organisation set up to raise awareness of hearing. I guess too often our senses are ignored and it is great when a celebrity gets behind these initiatives. I did what James suggested to the audience and I 'Googled' to find out more information and found the following website: http://www.hear-the-world.com/ it outlines that artists like Bryan Adams, Joss Stone, Moby and many others are also Ambassadors.
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Taken from the website is this quote:
"Hear the World is an initiative by Phonak that aims to raise awareness of the topic of hearing and hearing loss and to promote good hearing all over the world. The goal of the Hear the World Initiative is to educate the general public about the importance of hearing, the social and emotional impacts and the benefits of available solutions for those with hearing loss."
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Anyway to summarise the performance of "The Other Woman" it was very entertaining, and was great to see the performers all relaxed and on stage just enjoying them selves in doing what they do best. It was a lovely entertaining way to spend a Sunday evening.