Mira Wang, left, Vanessa Perez, Bill Murray and Jan Vogler

New Worlds
Bill Murray, Jan Vogler & Friends
Symphony Hall
*****

The wonder of theatre, the performing arts, is its sheer ability to surprise you, to challenge your perceptions and, let’s be honest here, delight you, like, for example, a Hollywood A lister, movie royalty no less, performing readings from the likes of Hemmingway and Whitman amid pieces from an elite classical trio, then wandering through an audience at Symphony Hall throwing roses to his adoring fans.

For those of more . . . mature years, we grew up with Bill Murray – not as a mate, though I suspect that would have been fun, but as memories along our own journey through life, the moments of Meatballs, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day . . . and here he was being  . . well, being Bill Murray.

There were moments of laughter and his delivery displayed the actor’s art, especially in pieces such as With Pascin at the Dome from A Moveable Feast. Pascin, the celebrity artist known as The Prince of Montparnasse in Paris loved women and drink and Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast relates a meeting with the painter and two of his models, sisters, in 1923, with Murray reading the passage and voicing all parts.

We had excerpts from Walt Whitman, perhaps America’s greatest poet with Song of the Open Road and Song of Myself and there is humour with Tom Waits’ The Piano Has Been Drinking.

There is also sadness, especially for those with more years on the clock in the poignant Forgetfulness from American poet Billy Collins, chronicling the fading of mind and memory read over the haunting, melancholy Oblivion by Astor Piazzolla, the famed Argentine tango composer and bandoneon player. There is even an achingly sad slow dance between Murray and Mira Wang.

The music shared equal billing with Murray, hardly surprising  with three world renowned musicians. We had East German born cellist Jan Vogler and his Chinese born celebrated virtuoso violinist wife Mira Wang along with the much lauded Venezuelan-American concert pianist Vanessa Perez, a trio who could each command a stage in their own brilliant right.

The trio contributed works ranging from the familiar, such as the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 to the less so, such as Blues from Ravel’s Sonata for violin and piano No. 2.

The trio and Murray combined on items such as Gershwin’s It Ain’t Necessarily So from Porgy & Bess. Murray is not renowned for his singing which is more conversational in style then technically accomplished but done with great feeling when required as in Van Morrison’s When Will I ever Learn to Live in God, or, sung with his trademark humour, as in I feel Pretty in a West Side Story medley later.

The Gershwin song, incidentally, followed another Piazzolla piece, the challenging La Muerte del Angel played with some panache by Mira Wang.

The encore included Bruce Hornsby and the Range’s social commentary anthem The Way it Is which is perhaps even more telling in today’s USA.

And as for the roses . . . a bunch of red roses was presented to Murray at the conclusion so, what else, he left the stage and wandered through the audience throwing roses to the fans, a legend up close and personal.

We had seen some of America’s literary giants brought to life by a Hollywood giant with a counterpoint of a string trio of world class musicians in an evening sporting a heady mix of styles, of thoughts, of emotions and - a reviewer’s trusty touchstone  - an hour and 50 minutes, had flown by.

You had the feeling Murray and his trio were doing this not for money or fame, or to fulfil contracts, but because it was something they wanted to do, something they loved doing and believed in, and it showed. Friends on stage enjoying themselves and asking you to join them. To quote another American classic, it really was some enchanted evening.

Roger Clarke

25-06-25 

The New Worlds tour moves on to The Glasshouse, Gateshead on Friday 27-06-25

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