Michael Ball sings Gershwin – Kenwood House

Michael Ball was joined by Gina Beck, David Bardsley, Kerry Ellis and Viv McLean for Summertime – An Evening of Gershwin at Kenwood House, London

Summertime – An Evening of Gershwin, with Michael Ball (plus guests Gina Beck, Kerry Ellis, David Bardsley and Viv McLean) was performed at Kenwood House, London.

Michael Ball’s name drew the crowds to the final Live By the Lake concert in the beautiful grounds of Kenwood House on a cool Sunday evening in north London, but by the time the star of Sweeney Todd, Hairspray, Aspects of Love and countless other other West End hits came on at the very end of the first half, the natives were getting a tad restless.

Most of the audience were not Gershwin buffs and didn’t care whether it was the catalogue of ‘George and his lovely wife Ira’ (as one old-time radio announcer supposedly described the legendary brothers) that Ball was singing or ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’, they just wanted to see and hear their dimple-cheeked hero.

However, if they regarded the rest of the concert party – Gina Beck, Kerry Ellis, David Bardsley (a replacement for David Shannon) and brilliant award-winning pianist Viv McLean – as getting in the way of the main event, that was their loss.

McLean’s full-length, 18-minute ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ stole the show in the second half, allowing Ball to go off for a leisurely pot of tea (if he had wanted to), and there’s little doubt that those who had come a long way must have felt short-changed that the headline act performed only eight songs, nine if you count the encore he did with his co-stars.

After performing only ‘Strike Up the Band’ in the first session, Ball gave us the meat of the programme after the break with ‘I Got Rhythm’, ‘’S Wonderful’, ‘Nice Work If You Can Get It’, ‘Our Love is Here to Stay’, ‘Embraceable You’ – in a duet with the heavily-pregnant Ellis, ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’ and ‘Stairway to Paradise’ before signing off just before the 7.30pm curfew.

All good predictable stuff, nothing fancy, nothing obscure – in fact, just what they all wanted to hear, while for piano lovers McLean was a terrific bonus with his first-half ‘Variations On I Got Rhythm’, preparing us nicely for the technical mastery of his piece de resistance after the interval.

That unique mix of symphony and jazz ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, written in 1924 by Gershwin and his most famous work alongside the opera Porgy and Bess, has been performed millions of times before but not often better.

For the rest, Bardsley’s rich voice was perfect for ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’, ‘A Foggy Day’ and ‘I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’, while Beck and Ellis came up with the slower ones like ‘The Man I Love’, ‘Summertime’, ‘But Not For Me’ and ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’. Jae Alexander led the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra with panache, while at same time telling the audience the history of the songs, which will have added considerably to everyone’s enjoyment.

A fine evening of popular classics and a fitting finale to the Live By the Lake series of world-class music in a blissful setting.

Jeremy Chapman