London. Sunday 26-February-2023.
We were in London for a weekend to celebrate a friend’s birthday. The original plan had been to return to Penrith on the Sunday, but engineering works meant it would’ve taken forever (5½ hours instead of the usual three). So we decided to travel back on Monday, have an extra night in a hotel and enjoy the bright city lights on Sunday.
Ronnie Scott’s was sold out, we had already been to the Spice of Life for live music on Saturday evening. Fortunately, PizzaExpress Live in Dean Street had availability for Germana, so we booked ourselves in.
We arrived in good time, and were given excellent seats, a table in the second row. Before the show, Germana was standing in front of us and chatting to her friends who had front row seats including a man who, it turned out, was her husband. An added advantage of this venue is having the full Pizza Express menu so we enjoyed a meal of pizza leggera for me and a healthy salad for Mary.
She sang in a style I really don't know how to describe. Some of the songs had lyrics, others were scat singing and other vocalisations. It reminded me very much of one of my records: Chick Corea’s Return to Forever, featuring Flora Purim on vocals. That was very much Germana's style.
Between sets, she was standing right next to us, and we were able to exchange words, telling her how much we were enjoying the show. She had apologised a couple of times saying she had the generic Italian trait of talking too much. We were able to tell her how much we enjoyed hearing the back stories to the songs so she should keep on talking.
An excellent last minute concert.
Learn more at https://www.germanalasorsa.com/; listen or buy at https://fanlink.to/gDN5.
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