And on the seventh day, the time for Laura Mvula\u2019s concert had finally come. The audience in the Alexela Kontserdimaja auditorium was looking forward to, with great anticipation, what was probably the most awaited event of the 2018 JazzKaar Festival.<\/p>\n
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The British singer and songwriter walked on stage in a tight colorful tracksuit \u2013 pajamas, as she actually described them \u2013 embracing her white keyboard Nina, named after the great female singer Nina Simone and preceded by the rest of the band, bassist, keyboardist and drummer, who had already taken their places.<\/p>\n
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Perhaps the audience imagined Laura slightly different, since the shaved head displayed in all the posters scattered over the city had been replaced by a woman with long, carefully tied hair. Nevertheless, the somehow dissimilar and small Mvula demonstrated that appearance and size do not count when you are endowed with strong presence and a powerful voice.<\/p>\n
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After a sort of solemn start (Window Seat<\/em>) which morphed into the single Overcome<\/em>, from her second album The Dreaming Room<\/em>, the vibes went higher with Let Me Fall<\/em>. Although these songs were different in tempo and in the atmosphere they created, they shared the same characteristic: Laura Mvula is capable of taking songs, together with her audience, up to the skies through sudden crescendos that explain her well-deserved fame.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As we are at a jazz Festival, improvisation is always welcome, so when her white keyboard Nina seemed to have broken down, Laura swiftly switched to her keyboardist\u2019s instrument and after taking off her shoes, sang Father Father<\/em>, an intimate invocation of love that temporarily transformed the hall into a sacred temple.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n However, the ever-smiley Laura had been invoking not just love, but throughout the whole concert, more participation from the public, since performers like her need this kind of feedback to charge up and return such energy through their music.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n