There was a full house for Quercus at Exeter Phoenix on 23rd April, 2013.
Quercus were June Tabor, voice, Iain Ballamy, tenor saxophone and Huw Warren, piano. No doubt the individual reputations of the members of Quercus went before them. What many of us did not know was what music to expect from the combination. I am sure that nobody was disappointed.
The self described “queen of darkness”, June Tabor has a voice that can send shivers down my spine and she used her voice to full effect with Quercus. Despite the fact that we were presented with a pretty much relentless series of “miserable songs”, another quote from June, the total effect showed that wallowing in misery can prove a moving and even highly pleasurable experience.
The concert began with the pure solo voice of June Tabor with the classic English folk song Brigg Fair, one of many songs we were to hear concerning ardent yet ultimately unrequited love. Such passion in one voice!
The cool, stylish piano playing of Huw Warren came in with a complementary but different tune; then the Brigg Fair tune appeared again in the immensely moving saxophone playing of Iain Ballamy. The effect of the whole was magic.
I was impressed not only by the band’s thoughtful selection of songs and tunes to form a complete programme but also by their acknowledgement of music sources and often the context in which the songs had been composed or collected. Many songs were chosen for what they expressed, about social and political attitudes, universal themes of love and death or the respected lives of ordinary people.
We learned from June that the song Rufford Park was from the singing of Joseph Taylor, a Lincolnshire woodman and folk singer revered by composer Percy Grainger. The background of the song were the enclosures which devastated the lives of rural working people.
Come Away Death was a song made up lyrically of floating verses that appear in numerous traditional songs from the British isles and musically began life as a tune by Iain, then called Floater. All the verses had been found in the songs of a gypsy woman with the delightfully fanciful name of Queen Caroline Hughes.
Other songs told of loss and seduction (and not always by men), beauty and horror.
Not all the songs were folk songs. A friend at the concert remarked that he had always thought of June Tabor as a jazz singer and I thought of this appreciatively when June sang the classic 1930s song I’ll Be Seeing You, “an affirmation of love and belief” as June said. I was struck, as in other songs, by the splendid arrangement: solo voice at times, solo instruments at times and also blends, such as the restrained and yearning saxophone alongside the clear, crystal voice.
The heart-felt concern for “the senseless waste of lives” in World War I led to June’s singing The Lads In Their Hundreds, Iain Ballamy’s beautiful arrangement of George Butterworth’s song setting for one of the A.E. Housman poems from A Shropshire Lad. This was followed by Teares, played on the piano by the composer Hugh Warren, a wonderfully poignant and evocative piece.
We knew in advance that the concert was with Quercus, not just June Tabor and friends, and Hugh and Iain played several instrumental pieces, mostly written by one or other of them. Hugh said that they sometimes broke the unerring stream of misery with a bit of light relief and we got that with joking remarks but not with the music which included an amazingly jazzy and superb version of Chopin’s Death March.
In the songs, Iain and Hugh enhanced June’s clarity, passion and depth with their sensitive and inspirational playing and I felt the concert was a very complete experience.
By the end of the evening, the ensemble had clearly enjoyed themselves and the audience had too. We had listened intently; we had not, June said, fidgetted in our seats and we had laughed in all the right places (Yes, there were lighter moments). After what we were told was the last song, an interpretation of Robert Burn’s song of “love against all odds”, Lassie Lie Near Me, we wanted more.
The trio were waiting behind the stage curtains to return for their final stirring song All I Ask Of You, the tune for which June had come across on Iain Ballamy’s first album, a tune which had words which June’s friend Les Barker adapted from the original. It was a hymn-like yet fittingly secular song about love and remembrance.
I had experienced a dynamic and memorable concert. I did as I was told and bought the Quercus CD.
June Tabor, voice, Iain Ballamy, tenor saxophone and Huw Warren, piano were at Exeter Phoenix on 24th April, 2013.
http://www.ballamy.com/quercus/
Martin Hodge