Old friends, new tricks, and the flugelhorn as the unbilled third lead.
Friends who have known each other from school make the best duos; Whitehead and Milne prove it within seconds of Gershwin’s Three Preludes. A cheeky trumpet flourish opens the evening and shifts to nearly crying through the middle section before Milne takes his own moment at the piano. It’s a fitting overture for a night that swings between mischief and melancholy.
The real pleasure of this programme was in its intimacy. Florence Price’s The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face was followed by Ethel Smyth’s Nocturne, a solo turn for Milne, was one of the night’s quietest moments and one of its best, his touch soft enough that you almost forgot Smyth wrote it between spells in a jail cell.
Charlotte Harding’s To Stay Open, performed on flugelhorn with Harding in the room, was one of the night’s standout moments. Harding calls it a “feminine fanfare,” and it was originally recorded in a cave in the Peak District, an echo Whitehead and the room seemed to summon even without the geology. The flugelhorn suits Whitehead’s sound beautifully, warm and rounded where the trumpet is bright, and her advocacy for the instrument’s underused solo repertoire felt entirely earned by the end of the set.
Milne’s moment to shine was his performance, entirely from memory, of Gershwin’s The Man I Love/I Got Rhythm. Noah Max’s Ennui, written for the duo, moved from stillness through drama to a muted flugelhorn solo in its second movement for a flugelhorn solo, the same mute Miles Davis favoured, a nod that also threaded through Barry Mills’ Evening, written for Whitehead after the pair met in Brighton. Andy Scott’s And Everything Is Still…, originally written for flute, worked just as well handed over to the flugelhorn.
The evening’s most touching moment came with Pete Walton’s Joey’s Lullaby, its world premiere held at a small school in Yorkshire and this its London debut, written for Whitehead’s baby son born at the end of last year. It was the kind of programming choice that only works live, in a room, with the people who wrote it and lived it sitting a few feet away.
The pair closed with a Gershwin trio, weaving together Someone to Watch Over Me, Rialto Ripples Rag, a piano solo, and I Got Rhythm, before the pair returned for an encore arranged by Whitehead’s father, a nod to The Sound of Music that sent the room out humming.
Upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s has the low-lit and close-quarters ambiance this programme needed, enough to watch every bead of concentration. Whitehead and Milne aren’t just a great duo, they’re old school friends who never quite stopped showing off for each other and their delight in it is contagious.
Imogen Whitehead and Patrick Milne performed at Upstairs at Ronnie Scott’s, London on Monday 27th July.
Good review of a great show