Allen Toussaint brought his inimitable style to both coasts of North America over the past few days, including sets in Boston, New York, and Vancouver. At Thursday's shows at Scullers in Boston, "the 71-year-old New Orleans icon used," says the Boston Herald, "the power of music to smother us Yankees in Big Easy love," including a "jaw-dropping" medley of tunes. "The audience ate it up."
Allen Toussaint brought his inimitable style to both coasts of North America over the past few days, beginning in the East with a two-set stop at Scullers in Boston Thursday night and a free outdoor performance in New York City on Saturday for Lincoln Center's Out of Doors concert series, followed by a stint on the other side of the continent for the Vancouver Wine & Jazz Festival on Sunday. He'll be back East this coming weekend when he plays his Sunday noon set at Joe's Pub in New York.
At Thursday's gig at Scullers, which included songs from The Bright Mississippi, Toussaint's recent Nonesuch release of Crescent City jazz, "the 71-year-old New Orleans icon used," says the Boston Herald's Jed Gottlieb, "as corny as this sounds—the power of music to smother us Yankees in Big Easy love."
Gottlieb cites the "sunshine and humor" Toussaint's voice brought to the proceedings and posits, after a "seamless medley" of tunes, "Who needs Danger Mouse and a bank of computers when Toussaint and his piano can create live mashups this jaw-dropping?" The questions proved rhetorical, as the reviewer concludes: "The audience ate it up."
Read the full concert review at bostonherald.com.
For upcoming tour dates, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
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