Monday night is a jazz night in JJ Smyths which at the moment is featuring a series of gigs by The Phil Ware Trio with a different guest week and when I got an email saying that Honor Heffernan’s next Dublin performance was as this week’s featured guest in Dublin’s most intimate jazz venue, I jumped into the car and down to Aungier St to see this extraordinary, classy Irish entertainer live on familiar ground.
I picked up Honor’s new CD Fire and Ice a few months back and since then I have developed a slow burning infatuation with each song and felt that an opportunity to hear the material in the flesh would be the perfect way to spend a Monday night in October.For many years now I have held Honor Heffernan in exhilarating regard and her appearances on TV and Radio are a constant and eager delight demonstrating an artist on top of things and on top of her game, an inspiration and antidote for the dust and confusion of life.
To also put my affection for this wonderful Dublin born singer in context its about the fact that I grew on a mainstream musical diet of Rock, Blues, Country and Folk and considered Jazz as a void of nothingness, a stupendous mountain of technical proficiency that I was unable to secure my footing, having nothing to cling on to in the musically adventurous unknown, where nothing appeared recognisable invariably finding myself slipping back to the more familiar terrain of the blue rhythm highway until Honor opened the door for me, getting me all musically restimulated, revitalized and reorganised to her music and the artists she passionately interprets with such a sparkling and bright vocal presence.
I have had a similar experience in recent years with guitar music, it being my favourite key of choice for opening the door to a musical performance, turning left on blue into the engaging jazzy blue sound of Chicago Guitarist Dave Specter and our own superb Nigel Mooney and his recent All Your Love In Vain CD which is a passport to musically get with it, have fun and be alive jazz.
The Phil Ware Trio featuring Phil on Piano, Dave Redmond on Double Bass, and Kevin Brady on Drums were the perfect atmospheric backdrop for Honor, superbly embellishing her engaging live performance material and cool vocal repertoire of classics in the warm candle lit ambiance of JJ’s upstairs lounge.
Honor Heffernan’s calm confident friendly stage presence is captivating and her voice has what it takes to meet and handle anything and everything bridging gaps between all genres.
Song’s like Old Devil Moon, All Or Nothing At All and Mel Torme’s Born To Be Blue flow lyrically; clear and distinct like a glacial singing stream flowing down from a Swiss mountaintop beneath a cobalt blue expanse of sky revealing not a cloud in sight.
How Insensitive the last track on Fire & Ice was a rich and luxuriant gem on the night with some dazzling subtleness and delicacy from Phil, Dave and Kevin parking it in the same garage for me as The Girl From Ipanema at the risk of sounding like a complete Philistine.
From West Side Story Honor gave a perfect and flawless version of Cool.
“Take it slow and Daddy O
You can live it up and die in bed”
Again and Again Honor Heffernan zaps the audience with her wonderful pretty anachronistically demure and comforting stage presence, her beautifully ethereal long wavy blonde hair which was captured in a radiantly glorious photograph on the flip side cover of her Stormy Waters LP cover which is strategically positioned at the front of my treasured vinyl collection because of its ability to generate a tremendous upsurge of spirit every time it catch’s my eye.
Be Cool and Shadow Of Your Smile were hypnotically spellbinding with Phil Ware’s rippling pianistic sweeping melodies complementing Honor’s visionary vocals so beautifully in front of Dave Redmonds cinematic bass lines and Kevin Brady’s gentle timekeeping percussion brushing those incredibly potent Joni Mitchell poetic confessional lyric’s off the stage and into an indelible space in our precious memory bank.
Its a terrific band with an honest soulful vocal delivery, a romantic and silky smooth groove that’s effortlessly appealing, never overshadowing Honor’s vocals and takes the listener away to the musical equivalent of yoga, leaving mind, body and soul refreshed in a musigasm and wishing that songs like I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out To Dry and Temperance Street could last all night long.
Honor Heffernan’s self assured vocals are a national treasure and her stature owes much to the earnest, poised, quality material she chooses to perform with such a characteristically emotionally moving graceful style.
It was a heavenly live set of songs that has me listening to her Fire And Ice CD with such a renewed sense of appreciation that I feel like I am practically related to the songs now.
“Charm them
Don’t alarm them
Keep things light
Keep your worries out of sight
And play it cool
Play it cool
50 -50
Fire and Ice.”
Mick Kenny aka MTW
