Live Performance Review: Abdullah Ibrahim,  The Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Friday 18.07.2014, 20:00

This gig was part of the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival 2014, and due to this there were two other performances on the bill. The performances were under the banner of 'Mandela Day Concert'. I have given the headline to Abdullah as he is the only one I landed up seeing.

For those who don't know, Abdullah is regarded as the master Jazz musician of South Africa. He is now 80 years old and has had a career of international renown for well over 40 years. I first heard him perform on BBC2's Later...with Jools Holland in 2000.  

Some weeks back, I had looked at the programme for the Jazz & Blues Festival and for yet another year I thought there is nothing that catches my eye. A colleague had caused me to look again at details, and it was then that I spotted Abdullah was performing. That was a prospect I was not going to miss, so with literally a couple of days to go I got a ticket for the middle of the second row. It was only at the venue that I realised that Abdullah was on first. 

It was just him on piano without any accompanyment. It was one of those performances that was quite remarkable and faultless; a slinky-soulful-funky-joy from start to finish. He performed what my 'untrained-ear' took to be, a semi-improvised long piece that appeared to cover different periods of his enduring career. The only criticism is that I would have preferred for him to have played for longer (though then I never expected to be able to see him perform, so mustn't grumble). 

Why did I not stay for longer? Well sadly that it appeared somehow that the gig had drawn what can only be described as the most ignorant and disrespectful bunch of knuckle-dragging numpties that I have come across in a very long time. That was certainly the impression from where I was sitting. During the performance the amount of people who were glued to their illuminated-dumb-phones while being completely ignorant as to how distracting the enchanting-glow of this is, was quite staggering. Even worse was the amount of noise from people banging seats while happily taking themselves elsewhere; are people no longer encouraged to stand quietly during a performance? Is it me who is the weirdo for wishing to have hush while an absolute legend of jazz demonstrates his considerable skill? I could not tolerate these neanderthals any longer and there was too many guilty parties for me to tackle during the break. - Regrettably this made me grateful he had been on first.  

My comment previously about wishing he could have played for longer, this would only stand if we were fortunate enough to have a respectful audience. I don't think it fair to subject him as a master-musician to the level of dunderhead behaviour he sadly was having to put up with that evening.

Despite this considerable and legitimate gripe, I still consider his performance to have been impeccable, this is why the rating is what it is, and why I feel very fortunate to have been witness to this despite the circumstances:

Rating: 10/10.