ARTIST : BJ COLE :
I had known Kenny for a while before he asked me to perform at the first secret concert at his apartment.
I suggested a performance with cellist Emily Burridge as our music seemed perfect...  MORE

GUEST : David McGeachie :
I was intrigued when Kenny said he was having a concert in his flat. It’s a big loft-style apartment but still, the idea of having professional musicians play there, for invited friends only, sounded great. It was good because you weren’t sure how this was going to work – was it a party? Would they do requests?
Then he said it was going to be BJ Cole plus top cellist Emily Burridge and the plot thickened.
I knew BJ’s name – he’s one of those musicians who is on the credits of many more CDs you own than you will realise. In the incredibly tight world of London recording studio session work, if you want a percussionist you call Jody Linscott, if you want a bass player and Pino’s in town he’s the top of your wish list, and if you need a pedal steel player there’s only one name in the frame; BJ Cole.

We’d all been to Kenny’s place before but this evening was different. It had the same elements as a party – drink, music, people, the furniture cleared away, people smoking on the balcony, a Saturday night, but this was different.

BJ and Emily were set up backing onto the main living room wall and a small rope light round them and in front of them subtly suggested a boundary of the area in which they were to perform, to give them space although in reality of course they were two feet away from the front onlookers. This gig was what you call ‘intimate’.

We all quietened down and took our seats or places at the makeshift bar or on the stairs or looking down from the kitchen, or through from the balcony, wondering what would happen but somehow knowing it would be brilliant – and it was.
Soon there was silence. Then the music started. No singing, no rhythm machines, no foot tapping, just the romantic sound of the steel guitar, evocative of we didn’t know what, but something good and kind, and the somehow more stern, deliberate and melancholic, but perfectly complimentary, washes of Emily’s cello.

The pieces just drifted into the room, floated around us mellifluously, in the air, then drifted quietly out again when they’d had enough of us. Then silence. Then emotionally-fuelled applause as Emily smiled warmly and BJ grinned up at us through his glasses in joy and surprise, as if he wasn’t quite sure himself where that beautiful music had just come from, even though he was responsible for half of it.
At certain times particular mournful counter-melodies made grown men feel like they sometimes do when they come out of a classic movie with their girlfriends; saying nothing, upper lip wavering, feigning cool but actually wanting to burst into tears and not sure why. I was one of them and I wasn’t alone.

This was a fantastic evening of music – a recital, no less - but in familiar surroundings with friends which made it warm and special.

Roll on the next one – part of the fun is wondering what or who it could be. Somehow I don’t think it’ll be some dodgy busker with an acoustic guitar, vaingloriously strangling ‘Wonderwall’ and ‘Mrs Robinson’.
I’m bound to have a gig that night anyway.

David McGeachie


GUEST : Haystack :
'A barmy summer evening' was promised on the invites to this 'secret concert' .. and it delivered in ways that
we could never have believed.
I love the experience of seeing musicians perform in small venues, where ...  MORE