Gig review: Carol Kidd and Brian Kellock Trio

Given a sell-out crowd for singer Carol Kidd, it might have been reasonable to expect her co-star, pianist Brian Kellock, to open the show with a trio set that leant to the mainstream end of his wide spectrum of jazz styles.

Not a bit of it. The pianist began with series of crashing discords that would have done justice to avant-gardist Cecil Taylor, the prelude to a set that was certainly built on swing, but shifted tempos and tunes in kaleidoscopic fashion, while bassist Kenny Ellis and drummer Stu Ritchie hung in with just about every unexpected twist.

He didn't so much play a piece as go on a series of extended journeys that, while not exactly medleys, deviated and digressed through a welter of material (did anyone manage to count the tunes referenced?), all delivered in volatile, virtuoso fashion, and with a song on ukulele from Ritchie for good measure.

If it wasn't quite what the majority of this audience may have anticipated, he was more decorous in his beautifully sensitive accompaniments for Carol Kidd in the second set, although decorous does not seem quite the right word to apply to anything pertaining to the ebullient singer on her home turf.

In between the wisecracks and chatter, she demonstrated that she can still bring a touch of class to ballads like It Never Entered My Mind with Kellock, or Embraceable You with the trio.