Gillian Moore

Gillian Moore

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Holy Sav­iour An­gli­can Church in Curepe was vi­brat­ed with songs of love on Sun­day evening. But on this day, the sec­u­lar merged with the spir­i­tu­al, as singer and flautist Ruth Os­man per­formed in con­cert.

Be­decked with tiny lights, trees, birds and a gi­ant rain­bow fram­ing the "stage," the church was filled with ap­pre­cia­tive pa­trons who turned up to en­joy the tal­ent of Os­man and her band.

Os­man, charm­ing­ly Caribbean in a bright yel­low jump­suit by The Cloth, chunky jew­el­ry and faux-hawk hair­do, de­liv­ered more than two hours of mu­sic, in­clud­ing jazz , R&B, kaiso, sam­ba and even dis­co. The band pulled off a pro­fes­sion­al per­for­mance in a con­cert that showed Os­man's con­tin­u­ing de­vel­op­ment as a fine artiste.

The mu­si­cians (Mar­va New­ton on gui­tar, per­cus­sion­ist James Fen­ton, Krys­tle Bas­combe on drums, mu­si­cal di­rec­tor/key­boardist Orville Roach, An­ton Ri­car­do on bass, sax­o­phon­ist Lau­rence Gudge and Shel­lon Man­swell on trum­pet) made use of the acoustics of the church, mov­ing through jazz stan­dards like a funky, per­cus­sive, syn­co­pat­ed Na­ture Boy–which Os­man ded­i­cat­ed to her hus­band–and a mel­low, rhyth­mic Cor­co­v­a­do, which she made her own with her per­son­al­i­ty and strong voice.

She punc­tu­at­ed her vo­cals with some sweet runs on flute, let­ting her in­stru­ment play with the oth­ers on­stage.

Os­man al­so show­cased some of her own com­po­si­tions, in­clud­ing Love, which she said was about God, "the ul­ti­mate lover," and Afro-Latin flavoured Bap­tise Me, and a sam­ba-sea­soned You, on which New­ton, who has ac­com­pa­nied Os­man for some years, showed her skills. The con­cert al­so fea­tured guest per­form­ers, in­clud­ing Ne­hilet Black­man with mem­bers of her All Girls Band, who did a pore-rais­ing acoustic ren­di­tion of Jamoo num­bers Favour and Hey Love, and po­et Gam­ma Ghost.

In the sec­ond half, Os­man re-emerged in elec­tric blue and con­tin­ued to sing, en­er­gy un­abat­ed.?Rain, an orig­i­nal song in which she de­liv­ered a po­em by her Guyanese-born coun­try­woman Ma­hadai Das, was fol­lowed by a cov­er of Bill With­ers' Grand­ma's Hands and a show-stop­ping dis­co num­ber with a big horn sound called Let Go, that brought the house down. Os­man wound down the sec­ond half with Caribbean clas­sics like An­dre Tanker's Ca­lyp­so Soul Food, David Rud­der's Haiti and Bob Mar­ley's Re­demp­tion Song, which she made mem­o­rable with a sweet, plain­tive tone in her voice.

Archdea­con Steve West thanked Os­man and the band for shar­ing her tal­ents be­fore they brought what had been an en­ter­tain­ing night of mu­sic to a close.