Nikki Yeoh © Nick White
Nikki Yeoh © Nick White
Nikki Yeoh piano Demi Garcia Sabat drums, percussion Shirley Smart cello
Programme Notes (also available free at concert)
Nikki Yeoh and her new Café Oran Trio will be celebrating the music of French-Algerian-Jewish composer Maurice El Médioni – interpreter of Andalusian, Rai, Sephardic and Arabic music to western audiences.
El Médioni was born in1928, taught himself the piano at an early age and frequented Oran‘s American bars in the 1940s. His big loves were boogie-woogie and Cuban music, and his style’s born of the fusing of these distinct influences with Arabic music. The piano may be a European instrument, but in Médioni‘s hands melodies take on a Middle Eastern character, subtly decorated and gyrating in modal arabesques.
Before he died earlier this year, Médioni had made special arrangements of his compositions for the Trio, and Nikki gave a full concert of his music at Ronnie Scott’s International Piano Trio Festival in 2019. For Little Missenden, we’ll also hear additional works by Nikki herself by way of contrast.
“By the evening’s final cavort, this intriguing project had captured Médioni’s music with a joyful and contemporary spirit.” Mike Hobart, Financial Times
Since her emergence on the British jazz scene in the mid ‘90s, pianist Nikki Yeoh has proved to be an improviser, composer and all-round adventurer who has continually sought to broaden her musical horizons. She has both led her own bands at the Royal Festival Hall and performed with hip-hop producers like DJ Pogo at more informal spaces such as the Jazz Café. She has been part of a brilliant duo with the vocalist Cleveland Watkiss and also worked with choral ensembles. In other words Yeoh is a creative free spirit who, although deeply rooted in the language of improvisation, is open to a range of music that leans as much to populism as it does high art.
“There was a lot of power in Nikki’s interpretations of the El Médioni and she roamed widely beyond the core of the pieces to show her fantastic improvisational sense of poise and purpose.” SG, Marlbank
Sat 5 Oct 2024 8.00pm
Little Missenden Church
£28, £20, £11
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