West Princes Street Gardens Spiegeltent ****
This wasn’t a night for his old group, however – well, not entirely – nor was it one for his more recent project 360, featuring former AWB members Malcolm Duncan and Steve Ferrone . Instead, this was Stuart’s own band, a sextet including himself, and a set which promised we would be “flying about the decades”. A former player with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Aretha Franklin and Chaka Khan, the guitarist has built a strong repertoire of his own over the years.
From his 1999 debut solo album Sooner or Later came the wistful moonlit jazz of Midnight Rush; from 360’s record, the emotional Wordsworth (written “when times were not so good,” he told us, “but hey, they get better”); and a fond penultimate farewell with Leonard Bernstein’s Some Other Time. That wasn’t the finale proper, however; instead, AWB’s Let’s Go Round Again, Person to Person and the closing Pick Up the Pieces inspired nostalgic dancing in the aisles after an evening of tightly-played reserve.
DAVID POLLOCK