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“Lady Sings The Blues“ is
a tribute to the memory of Billie Holiday in the best
possible way – presenting the songs she sang, in the style
of her period. It is not a play. Neither is
it a documentary, nor a slavish recreation of Billie’s
original recordings, but an evening
with seven of Europe’s finest jazz musicians and a most
remarkable jazz singer.”
Dave Gelly - The Observer
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Shows
Lady Sings
the Blues
Since ‘Lady Sings The Blues’ began its round of
concert-halls and theatres - Val Wiseman has been
Britain’s most well-loved Billie Holiday celebrant. She
sings as naturally in the style of the Swing Era –
Billie Holiday’s most joyful period and natural habitat
– as she portrays the sadder and wiser Holiday of later
years. The entire span of the musical world in which
Billie Holiday moved comes vividly to life when Val
sings.
Her two hour presentation covers Holiday’s career from
her first carefree recordings to her last most tragic
ones.
Original well-loved arrangements sit alongside new
settings; all of them
performed with a style and vitality that led the
legendary critic and Holiday connoisseur
Benny Green
(in his liner-note to the show’s first album) to observe
that ‘this music might, here and there, be greater
than the original’!
Val’s musicians include Digby Fairweather (trumpet and
musical director), Roy Williams (trombone), Alan Barnes
(tenor sax/clarinet), Brian Dee (piano), Pat McCarthy
(guitar) Len Skeat (bass), Bobby Worth (drums)
“Val Wiseman giving an uncanny reproduction of the
Holiday style and sound. Arrangements based on the
original records but with solos often surpassing the old
masters. Val catches the vulnerability of Holiday. The
seemingly straightforward singing of trite lyrics which
she twists into heart-breaking short stories of hope, or
hope betrayed. Here we have a genuine evocation, heart
on sleeve, with the small but urgent voice exposing all
the doubts and confusion behind the bright delivery.”
The Guardian
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