The Bellini Room is a jazz bar at the newly opened St James's Power Station at Sentosa Gateway. I went there with a few friends last night who wanted to go karoke and despite my not particularly liking that activity, figured it was worth checking out St James' Power Station and I'm glad I did.
The highlight for me was the resident jazz band and singer, the Bellini Room Band. A 7 piece band of mainly local jazz artists, it's led by a very strong music director, keyboardist and singer. The two older musicians, the drummer and the trumpeter both wear these fedora hats adding to the mood. The saxophonists are much younger and do excellent technical renditions. The singer that night was what really made the band stand out much more: a young Aussie jazz singer called Dylan Foster originally from The Flying Pickets in London.
I somehow really liked this guy's performance. It helped that he was cute and could engage the audience with ease by doing the occasional stroll amongst them to get a little audience participation. He really does as he says: put the soul back into swing. Best at the more soulful jazz numbers, he excelled at the more urban pieces as well as the latin jazz ones. He then unfortunately did a Michael Buble number at the request of one of the members of the audience in the exact same style of Michael Buble. While it was a very good imitation, its a bit sad that he felt he should imitate Michael Buble and I hope in time that he will do less of that and more of his own style which has enough individuality to make him stand out.
He then switched to some rock and roll numbers but despite his ability to belt them out, his personality so did not go with them so I hope he sticks with what he does best: soulful swing and latin jazz. And I hope he sticks around. There aren't any other singers like him on the Singapore scene that I know but I figure he's good enough and young and ambitious enough that he'll move on to better pastures soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment