Janette Mason’s stellar imagination strikes again.
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For a few years now, South London’s Hideaway has been honouring the music of Prince with its Wall to Wall Prince residency. The House That Soul Built were fortunate enough to attend a performance last night. With a couple of special Prince-themed cocktails on our table, we waited excitedly to see how the music of his Purple Highness would be tackled.
The flame-haired Janette Mason, Hideaway’s musical director, took ownership of the set. In addition to being a rousing keyboardist, Mason boasts formidable skill as a composer, producer, and arranger. At Hideaway’s Aretha Soul Diva event, she took the Queen of Soul’s repertoire in her stride – toying with the arrangements and sometimes entirely reinventing them. She was even more subversive at Wall to Wall Prince. She has the uncanny knack of undoing a song by its seams and reconceptualising it with brazen originality.
Indeed, Mason was not afraid to take fan-favourites and render them almost unrecognisable. The song I was least looking forward to, the karaoke staple ‘Kiss’, was a standout performance thanks to Mason’s slowed-down jazz arrangement, transporting the audience to the 1950s. Moreover, ‘Little Red Corvette’ became a country mid-tempo and ‘Raspberry Beret’ a celebratory reggae joint – renamed ‘Guyana Beret’. ‘When Doves Cry’ was also given the bassline unusually absent from the original recording. As singer David McAlmont described, Mason doesn’t arrange songs, she ‘de-ranges’ them.
Sharing lead vocals on the evening were McAlmont and Natasha Watts. Born in London in 1967, McAlmont moved to his mother’s birthplace of Guyana where he first discovered the music of Prince. After his return to the UK, McAlmont began his music career in the London band Thieves. He subsequently established a solo recording career, collaborating with David Arnold, Michael Nyman, and Paul Butler amongst others in the process (read a full biography here). Watts gained awareness in 2012 when she featured on the Coolmillion track ‘Show Me’. She went on to tour with the Empress of Soul Gladys Knight across the UK in 2015 and continues to record and perform regularly (full biography here).
A casual and infectiously comfortable performer, McAlmont brought his expansive vocal range to Prince’s catalogue. On certain songs (‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’, ‘Play In The Sunshine’), his falsetto struck like a flash of lightning. Yet he can also reduce his voice to a tremble, with an evocative, wispy vibrato. His rendition of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, delivered just with Mason on piano, drew audience members to their feet. Watt’s silky tones shone on a stripped back rendition of ‘Money Don’t Matter 2 Night’, accompanied by Dave Ital on guitar. She did not quite muster the emotional release required of ‘Purple Rain’, her performance perhaps inhibited by hokey audience participation. However, drawing upon the Chaka Khan rendition, she ad-libbed and wailed over ‘I Feel For You’ wonderfully.
Supporting McAlmont and Watts were some of the UK’s finest musicians. Alam Nathoo’s saxophone brought to life the ‘jazzified’ rendition of ‘Kiss’, while Dave Ital on electric guitar exploded on ‘Play In The Sunshine’. Mason is a sight to behold on keys, commanding the band throughout, while Joe Sam on bass and Chris Morris on drums are also worthy of ovation. Together they captured the topsyturviness and eclecticism of Prince’s catalogue.
Check our Hideaway’s other events here.
(Image taken from Hideaway website)
