Location: Postojna, Slovenia
Concert date: 20.12.2007
Attendance: 300
Ticket price: 12,00€
In the dying gasps of this year, despite a freezing December evening, my concert wanderings dragged me back to Postojna for the final act of this year’s Postojna Blues Festival. Last on a bill of better- and lesser-known names from the music world was the incredible Joyce Yuille, a New York-born gem of the younger generation of vocal masters. Her repertoire mostly bows to spiritually oriented motifs, rounded out by the quality playing of the trio of an old friend of Postojna stages, Italian troubadour Mike Sponza. You probably remember him from the days when Raphael Wressnig’s cranked-up Hammond roared from the main stage of Predjama Castle. And if the ever-upbeat Mike made his name back then mainly as an outstanding jazz interpreter, backing the untamable Joyce Yuille had something completely different in store for him. The shapely Joyce, who in keeping with the old Black tradition comes with a seriously amplified backside, likes nothing better than to roam the ground of gospel roots. There it traditionally mixes with soul, sparkling and armed with a strongly emphasized emotional charge, and of course, with a good dose of blues too.
This powerhouse offers far more than the average Slovenian Joe could ever picture from the acrobatics of facts and metaphors strung together above. Joyce is a top-class musician from head to toe. Her “showman”-style, finely polished performance brims with infectious musical rhetoric, and after almost two hours of agonizing persuasion even the Slovenian capital of blues finally fell to its knees before it! But the singer’s biggest trump card hides in the depth and unpredictable emotional swell of her unbelievable voice, which builds an impenetrable wall of sound. Honestly, the masterfully executed vocal play, something so simple yet loaded with immense feeling, stunned everyone in the room. Me? I humbly admit I’ve never experienced anything like it!
The charismatic Joyce met the proverbially cold-blooded audience with an honest taste of perfectly rounded Black spiritual preaching, and it took a good while before the already traditional, cautious thawing of the atmosphere shifted into its most active phase. Well, in an age of creeping clericalization of Slovenian society, any mixing of black and white surely looks like a devil-sent deception of unsuspecting Slovenedom. Away with the nonsense! Joyce first tried her luck with the charming This Little Light Of Mine and Nobody Knows The Trouble I See, two interesting symbioses of gospel and jazz elements that gave us a first hint of her extraordinary vocal range. Next came the biggest surprise of the night, a fantastically arranged Imagine by John Lennon, with which the singer opened a window deep into her heart for everyone present for the first time. The festival of top-notch vocal workouts rolled on with jazzy, soul and above all gospel-tinged takes on Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, When The Saints Go Marching In (mostly heard these days in various jazz variations), and the absolute favorite of the night, the solo vocal number What A Wonderful World, which laid the perfection of the depth of her voice completely bare.
Joyce Yuille thrilled us all evening long with undiminished intensity. Her charismatic voice can handle even the most radical stylistic swerves, like jumping from the angelic Silent Night straight into the hot-blooded, not-at-all-friendly cruelty of traditional blues. Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child is one of those shattering vocal and instrumental statements where love and passion mix with despair. The unstoppable emotional carousel reaches deep into the heart, thanks also to the fantastic Mike Sponza, who, visibly moved, soon gently danced off into rapture. To close this outstanding night, the fired-up singer served up an encore with the well-known gospel standard Oh Happy Day, which turned Predjama Castle into a veritable religious center, full of an extraordinary atmosphere of harmony and mutual understanding. Every single person there became just a tile in the mosaic of spiritual transport, which, thanks to the extraordinary voice and character of Joyce Yuille, definitely delivered one of the highlights of the winter part of the Postojna Blues Festival!
Text: Daniel Pavlica
Photos: Mojca Perdih
Setlist
1.This Little Light Of Mine 2.Nobody Knows The Trouble I See 3.Imagine 4.God Gonna Trouble The Water 5.When The Saints Go Marching In 6.Swing Low Sweet Chariot 7.What A Wonderful World 8.Down By The Riverside 9.Silent Night 10.Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child 11.Amen 12.Higher & Higher 13.Oh Happy Day
Photo Gallery
