Review: ELLA AT ZARDI'S – ADELAIDE FRINGE 2022 at The Jade

Reviewed by Ray Smith, Wednesday 16th March 2022.

Reviewing Ella at Zardi's was my first visit to The Jade in many years, and I had all but forgotten the comfortable bar area and the adjacent cosy theatre. I had not forgotten the extraordinary talent that is Louise Messenger though. I have known her for over two decades, both as a close personal friend and as a superb and innovative musician. She was obviously only a child when we first met, but she was already an established vocalist in the music scene of her native Adelaide.

From the Boswell Project to the hit TV show, Popstars, and in countless jazz ensembles, Messenger has been a leading musical force in Australia and overseas for years, and her list of past collaborators is a veritable who's who of Australian jazz celebrities.

Currently resident in London, she has spent the last few years honing her craft in the often brutal and unforgiving London jazz scene, with her usual unflinching determination, resulting in the already keen edge of her raw and natural talent being sharpened to that of a razor.

It did not take her long to rise to the top and, through sheer hard work and performance upon performance, she took her shows from the stage that she built on the roof of the canal boat that she calls home, to some of the swankiest jazz joints that London Town has to offer, and in the company of some its swankiest jazz players too.

Tonight she took us to February 2nd 1956 in her jazz time machine, to allow us to witness a famous performance by Ella Fitzgerald at Zardi's Jazz Club in Hollywood. That particular performance was recorded in full, and Messenger and her band: David McEvoy, piano, Ben Riley, drums, and Tim Bowen, double bass, recreated the scene in exquisite detail, down to forgotten lyrics, audience requests, heckles and the on-stage banter between Fitzgerald and her players on that night 66 years ago.

It was such a wonderful idea, and she and her backing trio pulled it off brilliantly, but what shone through more than anything else was the utter brilliance of Messenger's performance, from channelling Satchmo to an extended, unaccompanied, high-speed piece of scat singing for 128 bars that ended as she hit beat one, bar one hundred and twenty-nine, in perfect pitch and in the same millisecond that the piano, bass, and drums hit it. It was impossible, which is probably why she chose to do it.

I was lucky enough to be accompanied by another Adelaide singer for this show and, as the quartet found that first beat simultaneously, her audible sigh of disbelief and delight said it all.

It was an immersive jazz history lesson, and Messenger had us all believing that we were the lucky audience at Zardi's Jazz Club on that magical February night in Hollywood, and we were absolutely delighted to be allowed to believe it.

I can imagine, a great deal of time into the future, audiences yet unborn, crowding a small, intimate theatre like this one, eagerly waiting to hear their favourite singer perform a recreation of, 'Lou at Ronnie Scott's'. A lovely daydream perhaps but, if a future singer was to attempt it, they would need to be very, very good indeed, because Louise Messenger is a consummate professional, in fact, her performances are master classes in professionalism, and while her singing is at a level all her own, she still holds the audience close to her breast in a rare and generous intimacy as she gently shares her passion with us. She is simply the best jazz singer that I have ever heard.