Zoe Rahman and Helena Kay, Edinburgh review: 'eloquent inventiveness'

Zoe Rahman | Getty Images

Zoe Rahman and Helena Kay, Queen’s Hall Edinburgh ★★★★

One of their numbers may have evoked an icy ring round the moon, but there was nothing frosty about the duetting between pianist Zoe Rahman and saxophonist Helena Kay, which was notable for its empathetic warmth and eloquent inventiveness.

A multi-award-winning pianist whose compositions are informed by everything from Anglo-Bengali-Irish heritage to both jazz and classical studies, Rahman’s initial solo set included numbers such as Go With the Flow and Dance of Time, imperious introductions giving way to lively melodic hooks and improvisational questing, while a trio of tunes, opening with Peace Garden, shifted through energetically rolling boogie, expansive, impressionistic interludes and bluesy flourishes.

Kay, also an award-winner and curator of this concert and a further Queen’s Hall jazz series running into next year, took the stage for another Rahman composition, Sweet Jasmine, their rich-toned tenor sax exposition gradually joined, almost imperceptibly by Rahman’s piano until the two were swinging neatly together.

This easeful duetting continued with Kay’s Virago, the tune’s theme of a female warrior perhaps informing a certain Highland sensibility to the sax’s calling before Rahman had her rumbustious way with it. Further Kay compositions included the quirky melody of The World I Live In, inspired by a Mary Oliver poem, from which Kay quoted, then there was that icy moon number, Winter Halo, the sax melody taken up with sensitivity by piano in a winsome jazz nocturne.

A beefy support set from the Nathan Somevi Trio was something of a contrast. Somevi’s distinctive hybrid guitar work combined reverberating chords with funky staccato bass grooves, saxophonist Simon Herberholz sometimes playing in tight unison or breaking away, all of it driven by at times hectically busy drumming from Kenny Lyons.