LIVE REVIEW: Van Morrison gets Cheltenham Jazz Festival into its groove with rousing set

Wearing his customary dark suit, shades and trilby hat, the Bard of Belfast steps on stage at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival to the warm applause of an intimate 1,400-strong audience, who are gathered inside Henry Weston’s Big Top Tent in Montpellier Gardens.

Delivering a brisk, faultless 90-minute set, he storms through old and new numbers and barely pauses for breath. Accompanied by a slick six-piece band, we’re treated to a jazz masterclass featuring keyboards, guitars, double bass, trumpets, glockenspiel – and funky backing vocals. As well as hitting all his notes effortlessly, Van himself frequently dives onto the saxophone and harmonica.

A travelling musician since he was a slip of a boy at 13, Van continues to play sell-out venues across the world – and on this evidence it’s easy to see why. Drawing on his recent and aptly-named ‘Versatile’ album, his set also meanders through an unsurpassed back catalogue and pays homage to the American jazz era. Curated by Jamie Cullum, Cheltenham’s most famous festival provides the perfect backdrop for Van to explore the genre which inspired him as a youngster, and which remains a touchstone to this day.

Van veterans know he often gives little back by way of acknowledging his audience, and thus it proves on the night; we get nothing more than an occasional muttered ‘thanks’. What he does communicate, however, is a sense of love, desire and reflection on human experience. Despite the up-tempo, jazzy feel the performance is also infused with romantic lyricism that defined his earlier work from ‘Astral Weeks’ to ‘Poetic Champions Compose’ and ‘Days Like This’.

Those hoping to hear smash hits such as ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ or ‘Gloria’ may be sorely disappointed, but giving fans exactly what they want is not his style. The 1970 classic ‘Moondance’ goes down a storm, however, and he uses it as an opportunity to improvise. This is repeated in later songs, where ‘Ancient Highway’ is beautifully interwoven within ‘Rain Check’. By this time the band has established an infectious rhythm and two women jump out of their seats to dance in the aisles. But this being genteel Cheltenham, there are objections from those behind and they are ordered to sit down – thereby quashing anyone else’s hope of breaking free from casual seat-bopping.

Unaware of the mini-fracas, the band move effortlessly on to the lyrical ‘Wild Honey’ and ‘Did Ye Get Healed’ before an upbeat version of the age-old classic ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’. By now Van has drawn upon both rhythm and blues as well as Celtic soul which defines so much of his work. The next two numbers then revisit his recent album starting with ‘Broken Record’ and moving on to ‘The Party’s Over,’ which seems to signal a conclusion in the offing.

Van saves the best for last, wrapping up with the most beautiful song of all, a reworking of ‘Ballerina,’ which was written about his first wife some 50 years ago. Given that he has recently been through a very messy divorce, it is perhaps a fitting reflection on the past.

But it’s fair to say that nobody predicts the ending – or lack of – as Van simply wanders off stage midway through the track, leaving the band to finish with a glorious, improvised finale.

An understated ending if ever there was one, but that is Van Morrison’s trademark. And he’ll be back again, because as the song says, you’ve got to, ‘Get on up, keep a-moving, moving on, moving on…’

Until next time then, Van.