The French Imany’s hit cream had a sticky surface for quite a few tastes.
Pop
In Imany Huvila on Wednesday 30.8. – The program of the Helsinki festival weeks.
The sound of the cello said to be the closest of all to the human vocal range. But what happens when there are as many cellos on the same stage as a real singing group – with the lead singer of the concert, as his accompanist.
A special starting point was presented on Wednesday evening at the sold-out Huvila.
You can’t talk anymore in the testing, because the French singer and songwriter, who was extremely successful in his home country Faith (b. 1979) released his first album with cellists already two years ago in September.
Since then he has toured the world with them and only them.
There were no other musicians on the empty stage of the suitably dim Huvila tent this time either, although there were now one fewer cellists instead of the usual eight.
Imany’s album those who listened in advance also knew the other essential, not so original starting point of his special project.
Twelve mostly English songs Voodoo Cello (2021) is tuned entirely to songs made by others, in contrast to the previous albums that sold platinum in France The Shape of a Broken Heart (2011) and The Wrong Kind of War (2016).
Born in them, Imany was near Marseille Nadia Mladjao is another key songwriter, mostly the lyricist and quite often also the composer.
In proportion to the instrumental starting point, resorting to covers was both understandable and justified. In the songs adapted for an exceptional ensemble, it is best to have something to stick to, something familiar enough.
With my own new and unknown songs, the project would certainly have been more difficult to implement.
Looking at the track list, you could see that it was prepared with the audience base in mind: there are both really old, old and quite new hits, there is pop, pop rock, indie rock and folk and even a touch of reggae – Bob Marley’s paragraph Concrete Jungle 50 years ago.
The latest song was made and recorded by the Australian Tones and I Dance Monkeywhich in 2019 was number one on the list in Finland for nine weeks.
But now it happened fortunately, the concerto’s cello arrangements – all Imany’s own – did little to emphasize the differences between genres. All the songs, when repeated, were parts of the same thoughtful and personal whole, the same Voodoo Cello.
For the most part, this worked excellently, because there were still differences between the interpretations, even though Imany’s own singing voice was a bit one-dimensional in the long run alongside the seven cellos.
That’s why exactly an hour seemed like just the right amount of time, and that was almost the end of the concert.
After Imany’s introduction speech, which was about a quarter of an inch long, there was another presentation Madonna’s recorded by Like a Prayer (1989), but was it, as the biggest hit of the concert, also the climax of the concert?
Not maybe, not either. At the level of drama, the performance was most impressive in the beginning songs, where the cellists dressed in white “protective suits” were still sitting firmly on the chairs, motionless, and even the fully hooded Imany did not reveal her face.
Later, the constant humming and spinning of the cellists around the stage felt pointless, even self-indulgent at times. Less would have been enough, even just music.