Corinne Bailey Rae's performance at the Roundhouse's Three Sixty festival featured an ambitious orchestral remix of her 2023 album, Black Rainbows. The album, inspired by the Stony Island Arts Bank in Chicago, explores African-American history and culture through a British musician's lens.
The show, featuring the Guildhall Session Orchestra, was a visually and aurally impressive event. While the two-hour expansion of the 44-minute album occasionally felt superfluous, songs like "He Will Follow You with His Eyes" and "Erasure" showcased the versatility and emotional range of the music.
Bailey Rae's performance was energetic and engaging. The show also served as a subversive history lesson, as she provided context for each song, exploring themes of racial marginalization and celebrating unsung black talent. However, the overwhelmingly white ensemble on stage presented a missed opportunity for further representation.
Despite some minor shortcomings, the concert was a generally excellent celebration of Black Rainbows, revealing its hidden depths and showcasing Bailey Rae's impressive talent. The reviewer gave the show a four-star rating.
A lavish musical feast with a side order of critical race theory, Corinne Bailey Rae’s bespoke show for the Roundhouse’s Three Sixty festival served up an ambitious orchestral remix of the Leeds-born singer-songwriter’s 2023 album, Black Rainbows. Inspired by multiple visits to the Stony Island Arts Bank — a hybrid gallery and museum space opened by the artist Theaster Gates in Chicago’s south side in 2015 — the album is a richly imaginative rumination on African-American history and culture, as interpreted by a British musician of mixed heritage.
Black Rainbows is a fantastic piece of work, Bailey Rae’s most musically and thematically adventurous album to date. Backed by about 40 members of the Guildhall Session Orchestra, composed of alumni from London’s prestigious music school, the singer proved an endearingly self-effacing hostess and an impressively kinetic, elastic and code-switching performer. That said, stretching a 44-minute album into two hours of music was not a wholly successful endeavour, the extra instrumental scaffolding sometimes sounding cumbersome and superfluous.
With Bailey Rae explaining the genesis of each song between performances, this show became a fascinating, subversive history lesson in places. He Will Follow You with His Eyes was especially strong, a seductively smooth orchestral jazz ballad recalling an era when cosmetic companies marketed white beauty standards to black consumers. Midway through, the string tremolos and velveteen vocals gave way to more sassy, funky, defiant expressions of authentic blackness. An inspired idea, superbly executed.Bailey Rae proved an impressively kinetic, elastic and code-switching performerRICHARD ISAAC/REX/SHUTTERSTOCKBailey Rae’s teenage years as a Nirvana-loving riot grrrl paid dividends on Erasure, an angry track about the marginalisation of people of colour that combined lush orchestration with visceral blasts of feedback-drenched guitar. Then the fantastic New York Transit Queen, a high-energy homage to the teenage model turned fashion icon Audrey Smaltz, was expanded from its two-minute studio blueprint into a howling, honking, hand-clapping explosion of collective joy. These orchestral punk numbers were some of the evening’s most original, thrilling peaks.Not all these sumptuous big-band arrangements served the originals well. A climactic 20-minute reworking of Put It Down, a tribute to the Chicago house music legend Frankie Knuckles, dragged and trundled when it should have soared. Also, Bailey Rae sharing a stage with an overwhelmingly white ensemble seemed like a missed opportunity, given the album’s key theme of honouring unsung black talent. Even so, this was still a generally excellent event: a celebration of a richly layered work still revealing its hidden depths.★★★★☆Cheltenham Jazz Festival, May 3, corinnebaileyrae.comFollow @timesculture to read the latest reviewsSkip the extension — just come straight here.
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