With five performers, close harmony singing and soundcapes created by glockenspiel, acoustic guitar and acoustic bass, piano and accordion, Let Me In presented an immersive show about the winter.
Familiarity featured thematic songs in a 90 minute continous presentation that made use of taped recordings to link the musical items.
With numbers that covered well known Christmas songs and other suitable material, the five talented singers provided surprises in both the set list and in the arrangements.
Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, often performed as a quiet reflection on live with an acoustic guitar became an almost gospel piece with bouyant piano and singing pushed to the front.
A Case of You by Joni Mitchel was a softly sung reverie, as were the more normally strident jazz songs I Get Along Without You and Dream a Little Dream of Me.
Don Mclean’s Vincent and Paul McCartney’s Blackbird also had strong arrangements, highlighting solo acoustic guitar and vocal harmonies, and In The Bleak Midwinter allowed the full beauty of Holst’s music and Christina Rosseti’s poetry to be heard to full advantage.
The highlight of the evening was a medley that featured Claude Debussy’s Claire De Lune that slowly morphed into Whole of the Moon by The Waterboys, allowing thematic musical and titular link to be fully deployed.
An encore of sorts – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas – was a showcase for the purity of the vocal blend that the five perfomers had.
