Review - Freyja with Rebecca
Rennie
@ The Snake Pit, Neutral
Bay, 4Feb00
In a corner near the front door of a small restaurant located in
mid-town Neutral Bay, a small combo was set up around a striking young singer. She
was performing her heart out to a typical jazz crowd in the post-dinner
ambience that is the lower North Shore. Rebecca Rennie was that singer, accompanied by Gino Pengue on nylon-string guitar and Junichi Shiomi on 6-string bass and the song Take The Child, from their “Freyja
with Rebecca Rennie” album was
rounding off the first set. By typical-jazz-crowd I mean more talking than
listening, but the no-holds-barred musicianship on display here tonight would rival
that at any venue, any time, anywhere.
Becc is going through some fairly major changes at the
moment – she’s headed mid-year to London to live, but right now she’s headed to
Montreux (no smoke) to attend the annual
jazz festival by personal invitation (major kudos!); her new website is mere days away from going
online and the album that quickly pended in my
review of the last recording is mere months away from release. This is not
quite nouveau-jazz, and not quite traditional jazz either – it’s a meld of
funk, blues, pop, latin and Spanish influences that make this trio come alive.
While they are limited with just the two instruments Becc’s stage-presence, performing to everyone like it
were her biggest show ever, and the three’s enjoyment of the work at hand as
well as their individual abilities more than plugged the gaps.
Set #2 soon started, and while the room emptied quite quickly, those
family, friends and supporters who remained were treated to another half-hour
of excellence. The second song of the set, JJ
Cale’s After Midnight, was a super-extended funked-up version that
featured several lick-trades between Gino
and Junichi and a fade or two for measure. Without A Trace was another stand-out with Gino playing the piano score on the guitar, and the
surreal beatnik Allen Ginsbergesque Don’t
Bother Going Home rounded out the
set beautifully.
Pissheads will aways try to either help or heckle, with or without a
sense of rhythm or timing, but professionalism will always prevent the deserved
rebuttal, unless it fits the piece being performed and the target misses the
reference completely. The night finished early for Becc as she headed home to pack and then to the airport,
but not without premiering another new song and leaving us with a half-hour of instrumentals.
Sydney’s music scene will be less for losing Freyja, so any opportunity to catch them live before you
can’t is rare and getting rarer!