Monikered ‘the Divine One’, Sarah Vaughan possessed a vocal splendour of a kind so rich and inimitable. Following an excellent run of tributes in recent years to Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Wonder, the BBC Proms turned to Vaughan and her catalogue to celebrate the centenary of her birth.

Breaking from these previous Proms, which shuttled efficiently from song to song, this event benefitted from the narration of co-hosts Clarke Peters and Marisha Wallace, who surveyed some of highlights of Vaughan’s expansive career – winning the Apollo Theater’s famed Amateur Night, collaborating with jazz luminaries Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, discovering her love of Brazilian music later in life etcetera.

The set did well to showcase Vaughan’s stylistic range, counterposing sultry ballads like ‘Tenderly’ with the toe-tapping gospel of ‘Great Day’. I was confused, however, by the inclusion of tunes like Dusty Springfield’s ‘Just a Little Lovin”, which Vaughan covered on her 1972 Feelin’ Good album. Why that over so many delightful songs more closely associated with Vaughan, like ‘Cherokee’ or ‘Nature Boy’?

The BBC Concert Orchestra, hot off their packed Disco Proms last week, were splendid as usual, this time under the command of the esteemed Guy Barker. They opened the second act with an instrumental bebop medley, closing with Gillespie’s Afro-Cuban piece ‘Manteca’, that blew the roof of the Royal Albert Hall. Sadly, the vocalists were underpowered on occasion, their softer nuances often lost in the sound mix (I’d suggest rewatching on BBC iPlayer to hear the things you might’ve missed). The closing performance of ‘Perdido’, forcing all four soloists to sing in the same key, didn’t work.

But there was plenty that did. Wallace gave theatrical oomph to opening number ‘I’m Gonna Live till I Die’. Twenty-one year-old Lucy-Anne Daniels gave delightful colour to ‘Nobody Else But Me’ and deftly handled the evening’s most challenging number – scat piece ‘Sassy’s Blues’, composed by Vaughan and Quincy Jones. Tomorrow’s Warriors alumna CHERISE demonstrated agile playfulness in her upper register on ‘Mean to Me’, peppering the number with wry asides, and revelled in the moodiness of ‘Misty’.

And then there was Lizz Wright (pictured). Flooring the audience with every performance, Wright sang with such understated ease, her voice like thick-set caramel. She drew out the melancholy of ‘Black Coffee’, arguably Vaughan’s finest recording, and flowed with a Vaughan-like grace on ‘Lullaby of Birdland’. If anyone came close to capturing the lustre of Vaughan’s singing, it was Wright.

All photography courtesy of Andy Paradise, BBC.