Judie Tzuke

Review from 'The Stage'

Guildford Civic Hall, January 30th 1997.

by Graham Gurrin

Apart from a couple of gigs last August at London's Jazz Café, it is four years since Judie Tzuke appeared in concert, let alone toured, yet it seemed like she had hardly been away. The moment she walked on stage at the Civic Hall the audience perked up, staying there untill the final applause. The fourth night of a 22 date tour, and things were settling nicely for two reasons.

First, the songs on her new album "Under The Angels" are easily her most accessible since her biggest hits "Stay With Me Till Dawn" and "For You", both of which received an airing, the latter as the final encore with a guest appearence on keyboards from Peter Gordeno.
Secondly, she is supported by a band of young, but superb musicians, allowing both the new and the old songs to be performed with a looser rockier feel, rather than straight reproduction of the recorded material. Richard Cardwell, keyboards, Dave Goodes, guitars, John Robert Wood, bass, and Darrin Mooney, drums, play so well together it is unfair to pick on any one of them, but of course I will. Mooney did a superb job of keeping the rhythm tight and exciting.

Impressive also was the variety of styles tackled. Tzuke is wary of being stuck with a ballad-singer tag, so when she wanted to rock as on "Vivien" she really did. but there was also room for the jazzy "Fly" and "Parrallel lives", or big production numbers like "Two Mountains" and "Without Love", which both had space for solos from the band.