Jessye Norman, the mistress of the American Masters, in Flanders

Although the vocal croupier hasn’t been doing Jessye Nor­man any favours of late, she cer­tainly knows how to make the best of the hand she’s been dealt, and as last night’s con­cert in Gent in Bel­gium demon­strated, she also still has plenty of aces up her sleeve. A per­plexed pub­lic were quickly won over, and con­tin­ued to warm up through the even­ing, as did Norman’s voice.

Gent, a mid-sized city with big ideas, is a good meta­phor for Jessye Nor­man her­self. Although it has a long tra­di­tion — with its mag­ni­fi­cent churches and van Eycks — it has clev­erly known how to rein­vent itself. Unlike neigh­bour­ing Bruges which keeps itself as a per­fectly main­tained museum, Gent has con­tem­por­ary art shows, light install­a­tions, is con­struct­ing a brave wooden and glass build­ing to host events right in the antique centre. Even the 55-year-old Gent Fest­ival of Flanders no longer has only baroque music in its cathed­ral and vocal recit­als in its opera house, but this year its dir­ector Serge Pla­tel presents a tango show and there’s also the excit­ing pres­ence of the El Sis­tema trained orches­tra from Caracas.

Sim­il­arly, Jessye Nor­man dur­ing the last dec­ade or so, has slipped into Amer­ican song and jazz, leav­ing the opera rep­er­toire which required too much from her age­ing voice, and lieder which needed more pre­ci­sion. Nor­man has adap­ted well, and has more aston­ish­ing qual­it­ies in her singing today than many sing­ers have at their prime. She juggles care­fully, but music­ally, to avoid cer­tain zones which don’t respond so well, and jazz styles allow her to do that. The col­our of her voice is still warm yet big, the vibrato is beau­ti­ful and con­trolled, and her breath con­trol is aston­ish­ing. Still man­aging to main­tain the slimmed-down Jessye2 fig­ure, she flashes her fam­ous smile and looks ten years younger than she is.

But most impress­ive about last night’s Amer­ican Mas­ters con­cert was the intens­ity of her approach to each song, each becom­ing a mini-scene, com­pletely con­vin­cing with its sad­ness, ten­der­ness or sheer joy. Jessye Nor­man gave much joy to this audi­ence mem­ber, and to the city of Gent who have the cour­age to think big.

Photo: Jessye Nor­man with pian­ist Mark Markham by Gra­ham Spicer

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