The popular British crossover pianist Neil Cowley has brought a funny and often unexpectedly moving personal story to Ronnie Scott’s – his devotion, since the age of nine, to the musical life of the comic actor Dudley Moore, who died in 2002. It could have been a mawkish occasion, but Cowley’s skill and obvious affection for his subject banished all but a glimpse of that.
He began with Moore’s famous Beethoven Sonata parody and brought it to an even more demented finale than the original. He then explored music he had first heard as a child, from the comic’s debut album, The Other Side of Dudley Moore – Broadway songs and originals delivered with the daintily polished touch and foxily paced swing of the comic’s beloved model, Errol Garner. Bassist Geoff Gascoyne and drummer Sebastiaan De Krom eased the leader into a cruise through My Blue Heaven (the first track from the Moore LP) and I’ll Remember April from Garner’s 1955 hit album, Concert by the Sea.
Cowley’s touch softened further as he settled in, and he revelled in the slinkily elided notes and glistening trills of this alluring pre-bebop piano style. He played the theme tune of Moore’s and Peter Cook’s Not Only But Also TV series and a startlingly affecting ballad, the yearning Waltz For Suzy – highlighting Moore’s gifts as an original composer, and the demons that shadowed his emotional life.
Cowley played a more personal blues that wound up to a chordal roar, made a tentative, box-ticking visit to one of the milder of Moore’s and Cook’s scabrous Derek and Clive dark-comedy routines and Katie Melua stepped up from the floor for a self-effacing but elegant Let There Be Love. The encore was a flat-out Latin swinger, brought to the boil by De Krom’s stagey but exciting drum tattoos and wild squealings on a ref’s whistle. As a sympathetically told tale of star status coupled with lifelong vulnerability, a tribute to Moore as a largely sidelined British jazz maestro, and an insight into Cowley’s own often camouflaged jazz roots, the evening turned out a triumphantly diverse hit.
