Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2013<\/p>\n
Stockport to Memphis
\nBarb Jungr
\n(with Simon Wallace)
\nDunstan Playhouse
\nJune 9.<\/p>\n
Barb Jungr\u2019s latest Cabaret Festival show, Stockport to Memphis, is also the title of her latest (eighteenth !) record album and features a mix of contemporary classics and her own compositions. It is a Look Back in Jungr, perhaps.<\/p>\n
The daughter of European \u00e9migr\u00e9 parents, Jungr was born in Rochdale in Lancashire and grew up in Stockport, a town ten miles south of Manchester. In a varied and successful career she has made it from busking in London\u2019s Portobello Road to alternative theatre and the Edinburgh Fringe to her present eminence as a chanteuse on the cabaret club circuit.<\/p>\n
Some of her more recent success has resulted from Every Grain of Sand, her 2002 tribute album of Bob Dylan songs. She has since followed that with Just Like a Woman, a Nina Simone tribute from 2008, and in 2011 another Dylan compilation – Man in the Long Black Coat.<\/p>\n
On stage at the Dunstan Playhouse, Barb Jungr, dressed in Bohemian black, opens proceedings with a snappy version of Leonard Cohen\u2019s Everybody Knows. It is not as fast-paced as her jittery Gala version from a couple of nights before, but it is still too brisk for its own good. Cohen\u2019s own recent versions have been perfect studies in the understated sardonic and Jungr\u2019s over-enunciated, broadly gesticulated reading, while lively, leaves little of the world- weary wit in this very timely song.<\/p>\n
Following with two recent compositions of her own \u2013 Sunset to Break Your Heart and Till My Broken Heart Begins to Mend \u2013 both expertly phrased and soulfully sung, Jungr reveals what is inevitably going to be an unresolved divide between her own capable, but less memorable, song-making and the startling renditions of well-known material she is also showcasing. It is immediately evident with her near- perfect reading of Joni Mitchell\u2019s River, a version that finds hidden depths even its writer never knew existed. Musical Director, Simon Wallace\u2019s peerless piano phrasing and Jungr\u2019s assured vocals make this a highlight of the set.<\/p>\n
Other revelations follow in quick succession. The melancholy gospel tinges of Hank Williams\u2019 Lost in the River also display Jungr and Wallace\u2019s expert control of nuance and mood. Then, after a funny reminiscence of the spotty, feral young mods of her teen years, Jungr takes Rod Argent\u2019s Zombies hit, She\u2019s Not There and with a shift in gender perspective, re-engineers it into the upbeat, but mordantly reflective, He<\/i>\u2019s Not There.<\/p>\n
Taking Neil Young\u2019s well-known, much loved, Old Man and turning it into a hymn to acceptance is yet another revelation in this dream set-list. Then, Tom Waits\u2019s apocalyptic Way Down in the Hole (theme song for The Wire) is deconstructed into a slow blues, garnished with another of Jungr\u2019s splendid harmonica solos. When, finally, we get a Dylan song, it too is a surprise. Lay Lady Lay, Bob\u2019s ultimate seduction song, is no longer – as Jungr observes – a macho conquest, but a song of experience hard-won ; the singer in command and the pianist in perfect unison.<\/p>\n
From Stockport to Memphis, a belter written by Jungr, not only charts her progress as a transatlantic ballad and blues diva, but closes the set. Again it falls short of the excellence of the cover versions \u2013 so it is only fitting that the encore goes to a Sam Cooke classic : Change is Gonna Come. It is a powerful anthem of hope, peerlessly delivered by both Jungr and Wallace. And yes, many things in this world need to change, but not Barb Jungr\u2019s gift for breathing new life into the music and poetry of late 20th<\/sup> century popular song.<\/p>\n Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n Published online in The Barefoot Review, June 11, 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2013 Stockport to Memphis Barb Jungr (with Simon Wallace) Dunstan Playhouse June 9. Barb Jungr\u2019s latest Cabaret Festival show, Stockport to Memphis, is also the title of her latest (eighteenth !) record album and features a mix of contemporary classics and her own compositions. It is a Look Back in Jungr, perhaps. The daughter of European \u00e9migr\u00e9 parents, Jungr was born in Rochdale in Lancashire and grew up in Stockport, a town ten miles south of Manchester. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5,9,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-24","category-archive","category-cabaret","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2298"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2306,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298\/revisions\/2306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}