Carol Kidd at the Theatre Royal, York

Nothing, not even a stage bathed in serene sky-blue lighting and adorned with imposing faux abbey ruins, could gloss over the mischievous, Glaswegian humour of Carol Kidd. It may be her many-shaded vocals and seemingly innate sense of improvisation that prompted Frank Sinatra to dub her 'the best kept secret in British jazz', but it's her affectionate, playful and plainspoken Scottish wit that oozes through the music tonight. "We drove all the way from Glasgow in the piss-pouring rain to see you today!" she exclaims, relaxing the four-hundred rain-dampened shoulders of the audience in front of her, before launching into one of the most heartfelt renditions of Someone To Watch Over Me that any of us have ever heard.

Tonight she's joined by guitarist Nigel Clark, who has been accompanying Kidd, on and off, for a couple of decades. The duo have braved the northern drizzle to promote their latest album TELL ME ONCE AGAIN (Linn Records, 2011) which lends a handful of songs to tonight's performance. Mercer/Mancini's Moon River, Walker/Arnold's You Don't Know Me and their co-written title track, Tell Me Once Again, show off the skills of each musician in equal measure, revealing a tenderness between the two that perfectly echoes the sentiment of each carefully-selected song. Embraceable You presents a delicate and sincere performance from Kidd, How Deep Is The Ocean gives Clark the chance to show us how a set of fingers ought to be used whilst an unrehearsed, surprise performance of I Won't Send Roses from Jerry Herman's Mack and Mabel is the highlight of the evening, demonstrating the instinctive kinship that exists between the two musicians.

Kidd's humour is not only apparent in the banter between songs but also adds a light touch to the songs themselves. Those 's' sounds in Gershwin's S'Wonderful are extended by Kidd to tens of seconds, resulting in belly-laughs all round. And the laughter is sustained as Kidd chooses to dedicate It Ain't Necessarily So to the clerical-collared gentleman sitting in the third row. I expected to leave York's Theatre Royal this evening with the lines of Gershwin in my head, but was comfortably surprised to walk home with laughter in my ears.

Liam Wilkinson
Northern Sky