Cabaret Sauvignon at L'Atitude Cork
There used to be a restaurant in London near Fleet Street called
Spagetti Opera where up and coming singers would punctuate your meal with operatic arias as a sort of musical sorbet. A memorable and rare enough dining experience for me to remember it many years later. Although I have scanned the restaurant lists, alas I could find no record of it on recent visits. Leaving aside the long running dinner shows aimed at the tourist market, live performers of any description are not usually found in our dining rooms where they might be usefully employed to create a mellow ambiance and cover lulls in conversation when you are done ooing and ahhing over your filet mignon and applauding the theatricality of your waiter's crepes suzette.
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| Cabaret Sauvignon Amanda Neri with The Vineyards |
So I was interested to stumble on the after dinner entertainment component of a themed evening at the
L'Atitude Wine Bar on Union Quay Cork. Titled,
Cabaret Sauvignon Drink the wine, Hear the song, Mezzo Contralto,
Amanda Neri presented a selection of repertoire from wine producing countries around the world together with a loose narrative, relating her choice to the wine theme of the evening, to mark the
Year of the Wine Geese, Her audience having been wined and dined over five courses were nicely in the mood for a little postprandial chanson. The set list included operatic arias, comic cabaret songs and songbook standards . Ms Neri's sultry tones suited the Latin repertoire particularly well. She chose a nice languid tempo for the standard,
Besame Mucho and it was good to hear
The Gypsy In Me, one of the more unjustly neglected numbers from Cole Porter's Anything Goes. She was backed by a quartet of young musicians, The Vineyards .
David Keating on guitar best evoked the Spanish element in florid virtuoso accompaniments.
Michael Young gave solid support on electric keyboard . A violin and cello added pedal notes and vamping chords with occasional solo lines. Amanda Neri showed admirable restraint in modifying her operatic style to suit both the intimate venue and repertoire. Both the guitar and piano were just a tad over amplified for my taste.The presence of a a music school a few doors down augurs well for future evenings of light entertainment at this classy quayside venue.
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Aloys Fleishmann 1958Photo R Frewen
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| Current Conductor Keith Pascoe |
City of Cork Symphony at the Opera House
Earlier in the evening, I caught the second half of the
City of Cork Symphony Orchestra's concert at
Cork Opera House. I was a member of this ensemble in the late 80's under Professor Aloys Fleischmann who I think still holds the record as the longest serving conductor of an orchestra. (58 years) Seated at the back of the stalls, I regret to say the acoustic was not good and despite the undoubted strength of the ensemble under conductor Keith Pascoe, the string sound sounded thin in a Brahms Symphony and moreover very many of the players were not visible from my seat.
Related posts
Midnight Rambles at The Oliver Plumkett
Wolfe at L'Attitude 51
Soirée avec Desaunay On the Pigs Back
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At the Oliver Plunket Bar, the Midnight Rambles session featured the second piano player heard on an evening of Leeside musical rambles. Michael Young was an adroit accompanist to Amanda Neri at a cabaret evening of chanson at L'Atitude Wine Cafe. Later, on other side of the Lee, Dee Power was a key (groan) element of a late night rhythm and blues 'jam' session adding chords and melodic interludes to vocals from Hank Wedel et al. While it was lively, it was not quite 'what it said on the tin'. Although the website suggests that this regular slot is an acoustic session which I understand to mean un-amplified, all the players were plugged in. Neither was there a sense that participants rolled in unscheduled as the term, jam session suggests. Among the comfortably full house of mostly middle aged insomniacs were members of the Cork Symphony Orchestra unwinding after their Opera House gig.
