Lorna Irvine reviews a tribute to the musical great.
When Glasgow singer/songwriter Warren McIntyre was plucked from the audience to dance with legendary singer, musician and political activist Nina Simone to 'Sinnerman' twenty-one years ago, he never dreamed he would be performing her songs one evening to a sold-out Royal Concert Hall.
Yet, voila! Here he is. The cheeky, affable young man, backed by a fantastic band (including Belle and Sebastian's Stevie Jackson on guitar/harmonica, musical director Allen Chalmers on piano, Sophie Pragnell's string section and JP Berrie's brass players) tears up the hall. Requests from audience members are played (even if McIntyre once forgets a couple's song--oops!) and a film is also being created about this show, as well as McIntyre's love of Simone.
McIntyre's voice, which is sweetly soulful, has an androgynous quality--very apposite, given Simone's deep, resonant timbre. It seems a nice contrast.
From the sassy swing of 'Sugar In My Bowl', the smouldering 'I Put A Spell On You' to an elegiac, sweeping 'Mr Bojangles', the band are phenomenal.
Interspersed within the performance are two films featuring the great lady herself. The first, a short interview, shows a typically defiant Simone in the mid-sixties talking of the importance of teaching children ("our future") of where they originated from and to be proud of who they are. The second is a skin-prickling, furious performance of civil rights anthem 'Mississippi Goddam'. I can feel electricity in my hair.
The highlights of tonight's actual live set though are the lesser-known 'Backlash Blues' and a swaggering harmonica-driven 'Do I Move You'. The euphoria of 'I Can't See Nobody', 'Sinnerman' and 'Ain't Got No (I Got Life)' turns the room into a gospel hall, and the audience are in an evangelical fever, up on their feet: a triumphant ending. Nina Simone herself would have been proud.
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