Fringe Review: Nic Jeffries

Reviewed at the Adelaide Jazz Club on 2 March 2019

Presented by Adelaide Jazz Club

Sydney-based musician Nic Jeffries, triumphed last year as the inaugural artist for the  Adelaide Jazz Club. He returned this year to kick off the club’s diverse Fringe season.

Jeffries teamed up once again with three local musos who have become his “Adelaide trio”: Mark Ferguson on keys, Shireen Khemlani on bass and John McDermott on drums. The four play instinctively and tightly, and display a seemingly inexaustable passion and energy.

The set opened with a straight, jazz instrumental, with the list moving on through Jeffries’s signature arrangement of Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely, an intense, slow-burn version of Lennon’s Imagine, a lesser known Stevie Wonder, Creep and a couple of Jeffries’s own compositions.

As a special treat this time, the band were joined, for a couple of numbers, by sensational vocalist Skye Jeffries, who also happens to be married to Nic. The two worked some magic around old Satchmo-Ella Fitzgerald renditions of standards, including Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off. The pair are considering returning to Adelaide next year with the full show: judging by the audience reaction last night, it will be a sell-out.

This beautifully put-together, masterfully played set achieved the almost impossible task of appealing to the hardened jazz buffs, and to a wider audience. Overheard from a gentleman who has never been to a jazz gig before “This just blew me away. It’s opened up a whole new world to me”.

Jeffries’s season has finished, but the Adelaide Jazz Club has three more artists lined up. Upstairs at the Gilbert Street Hotel, sitting at a table, drinking and nibbling while you listen to some of Australia’s best musicians (in any genre, let alone jazz)…really…what’s not to like?

Reviewed by Tracey Korsten
Twitter: @TraceyKorsten

Venue:  Adelaide Jazz Club at the Gilbert Street Hotel
Season:
Louise Blackwell and the French Set
8^th March 7.30 SOLD OUT.
9.30 Tickets still available

Andy Seymour
9^th March BOTH TIMES SOLD OUT.

Ingrid James
15^th March 7.30 and 9.30

Duration:  60-90 minutes
Tickets:  $27.50