One of the things about Opera North’s programming for the Howard Assembly Room is you never know what’s coming next – and the same could be said of the concert by Justin Adams and Mauro Durante. A blues-tinged vocal delivered with gravel-voiced conviction is followed by the austere tones of an Italian song. When one looks at their musical credentials – Adams worked much with Robert Plant, Durante with Ludovico Einaudi – the gap seems wider than ever, but, as the concert progresses, the audience finds a form of music appearing that owes as much to each of them.
Probably the key to the homogeneity lies in the fact that Justin Adams, brought up in Egypt, later in his life incorporated African and Arabian guitar styles into his own. Mauro Durante, on the other hand, belongs to a part of Southern Italy where the Greek tradition is very strong – he himself leads an ensemble with the name Canzoniere Grecanico Salentinto, performing contemporary versions of folk dances of the area.
Adams and Durante first met 11 years ago and have finally produced an album which one suspects this tour supports. Typically, though not always, songs last 8 or 10 minutes and go through many variations on the way, very often finishing with an explosive section, with Adams’ powerful rock-come-blues-come-African backed by the ferocity of Durante’s tambourine playing. As a percussionist Durante excels, with a huge variety of sound from his three tambourines. His violin playing makes less impression, though the melancholy in the second number after the interval – vaguely reminiscent of a television theme – is attractive.
But it’s the interaction that produces the best results: the violin from a quite different tradition in an American song, the juxtaposing of two totally different vocal styles in the same song. Eventually the two unite in an infectious brand of what you might call Mediterranean rock.
One small complaint has to do with time: five minutes late starting, 30 minutes first half, 25 minutes interval and, after 25 more minutes they’d finished. Of course they relied on the audience to bring them back and they played nearly 15 minutes of encores, finishing on another rocker to an enthusiastically responsive audience, but even so.
Reviewed on 4th November 2022.
