BWW Reviews: DANIEL KOEK ALBUM SHOWCASE, Elgar Room Royal Albert Hall, July 7 2014

For the last year Australian tenor Daniel Koek has played Les Miserables' iconic role Jean Valjean in the West End. He moved a little further west, to The Royal Albert Hall to launch his new album, HIgh, on a steamy London evening. This he did to spectacular effect, getting by with a little help from his friends.

Ten years after arriving in England, Koek retains an Aussie twang to his speaking voice but, no matter how enjoyable his poignant anecdote about the North London eccentric lady of a kind that seem to thrive on every street north of Regent's Park, we're here to hear the voice sing - and sing it does! That lady was a Billy Joel fan, so we get a lovely medley of the Piano Man's And So It Goes / She's Always A Woman. Later, there's a touching Stranger In This World from Boy George's musical Taboo, but we're all waiting for the first half closer, Valjean's Bring Him Home of course - and it's every bit as crowdpleasing as it should be, sung in a duet with Jonathan Ansell.

There's more evidence of the thrillingly visceral impact of West End voices up close when Koek is joined by his Fantine from Les Mis, the supercharged Na-Young Jeon, with the material veering into rock, as it had veered into opera in the first half - an impressive range! There are also contributions from other performers with whom he has worked: Caoimhe Ballard, tiny of stature but not talent, smashes Castle on a Cloud; the ever-improving Charlotte Jaconelli delivers a sensitive When Somebody Loved Me, the Toy Story II tearjerker; and even cousin with a guitar Sam Brittain had a go with a old Aussie rock standard going back to the lads' roots.

As he said (not that we didn't know) Daniel Koek likes a power ballad and they can pile one on top of another too much for my taste - that said, his second album shows an admirable variety of material and a voice at the peak of its powers. There's room in London for a lot more shows like this one: a kind of upmarket jukebox musical, mercifully shorn of the trite storyline and forced dialogue. It was lovely too to see and hear a live band play some very interesting arrangements of familiar tunes.

The takeaway? Koek's second album looks like a winner, but if he does another gig like this for his third album, grab a ticket as soon as you can!