When we came away from the concert there was a real rush – we all realised it was a formative moment in our musical journeys.Įveryone I am playing with on stage is into different types of music. At our first performance, at the 229 club in London last year, it was fantastic to see so many people singing along. So far, audiences have been really complimentary and enthusiastic.
Van Morrison: Beside You live at the Hollywood Bowl, 2008 – video I like to do the unexpected, so when people come along to the concert I want them to hear what they recognise, along with other flavours I’ve brought out of the original arrangements. I didn’t deliberately go down a jazz route, because that might have taken away from how the songs were constructed. The song itself tells you what’s acceptable. I wanted my musicians to do what the original musicians did: to play with it and ensure it works on stage to tell the album’s story. I wanted to capture this organic idea of the album with its stream of consciousness lyrics, so I approached his words as poetry, breaking them down into keywords and themes. Since Van Morrison’s voice is such an integral part of Astral Weeks, I treated it like an instrument one part of the conversation between the layers of instrumentation. When it came to reimagining the work, it was seriously daunting. They had a third session planned but it was in the morning – and jazz musicians and the morning don’t always go together. That was cool because they were allowed freedom to perform entirely in the moment – and they recorded it over only two sessions. Van Morrison just said to them: “Whatever you hear, play it and go with it.” The instructions were very short and the rest was up to the musicians.
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