Charlotte Jaconelli performed the Great British Songbook with Ross Leadbeater at St James Studio, London. Picture: Maximilien Spielbichler
Ross Leadbeater’s Great British Songbook with Charlotte Jaconelli at St James Studio, London.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
It takes a deal of persuasion on an October Saturday night to get a Strictly Come Dancing junkie away from his TV set and a delivery King Prawn Dhansak but, when you think of it, Charlotte Jaconelli’s angelic voice versus not-so-twinkly-toed Ainsley Harriott is no contest.
Not every classically-trained teenager would get over being beaten by a dog as Charlotte was in the 2012 Britain’s Got Talent final but this delightful 20-year-old with the musical theatre world at her feet is clearly made of sterner stuff.
Her contribution to the success of accomplished singer-pianist Ross Leadbeater’s Great British Songbook night at the cosy St James Studio was enormous.
Showing her versatility, Jaconelli moved effortlessly from Noel Gay to Elton John, Lionel Bart (she’s a distant relation) to Andrew Lloyd Webber, My Fair Lady (a forgiveable bit of cheating, Irish play, Cockney accent but American-composed) to Adele.
It was an evening of simple joys. Leadbeater, resplendent in velvet smoking jacket and bow tie, is excellent, witty company, played beautifully and with passion, and if his singing was not always note-perfect, the voice was never less than pleasing.
Being Welsh, he is particularly passionate about Ivor Novello and disappointed that so few of his songs are performed today or that some of the modern day pop stars who receive the prestigious Novello Award are not even aware who he is.
Leadbeater redressed the balance with the two Novello songs that straddled the two great wars, ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’, the First World War anthem written in 1914 when he was only 19, and ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’, which he wrote for the musical Perchance to Dream in 1945 to celebrate the troops coming home after the Second World War.
It’s always rewarding when one goes home from these nights out having learned something and I never knew that silent screen genius Charlie Chaplin composed the music for what was, two decades later, a big hit for Nat ‘King’ Cole.
A Londoner who spent most of his working life in the States, Chaplin wrote the music of ‘Smile’ for the soundtrack of one of his most famous films, Modern Times, in 1936. The words, from John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, both English, came 18 years later.
Everybody knows that Lionel Bart wrote Oliver! but I had forgotten he was also responsible for Cliff Richard’s first No.1 ‘Living’ Doll’, a song still so well known that the audience were word perfect in helping Leadbeater along with it, as well as ‘Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be’.
We had Leslie Bricusse, Anthony Newley, Vivian Ellis, Tony Hatch, the Bee Gees, Lennon and McCartney and Queen celebrated as well as the Maschwitz/Sherwin evergreen ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ and Ray Noble’s lovely ‘The Very Thought of You’.
It was not until the very end that the great Noel Coward got a look in and there just wasn’t time for any Gilbert and Sullivan, Sandy Wilson or a host of other British bobby-dazzlers, but they are an excuse for a Leadbeater/Jaconelli encore, the sooner the better.
It would be a joy to be there… as long as it’s not on Strictly final night!
Jeremy Chapman
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