Nigel Kennedy in Nottingham, 16 January 2012

Nigel Kennedy took the Royal Convert Hall by storm. He was very informal, told a joke in Polish, wore his Aston Villa shirt and talked a lot. But he loves to play and we got encore after encore and I got home an hour later than normal from a concert! He seemed to love us as an audience and certainly we took to his music. I have not kept up with Nigel Kennedy's musical development so was surprised to see the instrumentation for the first half of the concert, which was three of the Four Elements (Earth, Air, Water, Fire). Four violins, viola, two cellos two basses (one electric at times), jazz drummer, electronic drummer, piano/keyboard, lead guitar, trumpet and marimba with four singers. So this was jazz to my ears. Nice sounds, interesting use of the singers and Nigel, playing acoustic and electronic violin with a barrage of foot switches for different effects. After the interval I was more surprised that the instrumentation had not changed as Vivaldi's Four Seasons was on the bill. The beautiful tunes in that music was evident but most definitely it had Nigel's stamp on it. There seemed to be a break for a couple of beautiful violin/cello duets of Bach. Then back to Vivaldi and on to many extras, some lovely violin, piano, drums jazz pieces. An enthralling evening, so much more than I had imagined we would get.