REVIEW: Clare Teal provides a winning opener to Bury St Edmunds Festival

Clare Teal and her Mini Big Band at The Apex May 20

Once again Bury warmly welcomed Clare back to the Bury St Edmunds Festival for yet another amazing evening of songs paying tribute to the great Ella Fitzgerald.

A packeds house enjoyed Clare’s honeyed tones as she moved with ease through a host of favourites with some splendid accompaniment from her nine piece band proving that numbers in this case don’t count to create a great big band sound.

Her ‘Ellabration’ was interspersed with interesting snippets about the pieces many of them Cole Porter numbers and Clare’s sense of humour kept things lively including an unscripted incident of the sausage roll discovered on stage in the second half!

Old favourites such as I get a Kick out of You, Tisket Tasket, Paper Moon, Secret Love and Old Black Magic were performed with some excellent arrangements from band member Guy Barker.

There were lovely performances from Chelsea Carmichael on tenor sax and Simon Little, base, who also provided some vocals along the way.

The Yorkshire born BBC 2 broadcaster who has 14 albums under her belt just keeps on getting better as this show proved.

Overall we were treated to two hours of smooth sounds and as always wonderful vocals from a performer who did Ella proud. As Clare would say ‘very good’.