This was a great night of music featuring high quality musicians and vocalists.
Mo Pleasure has an impressive CV. He has worked with Ray Charles, Earth Wind and Fire, Michael Jackson, Roberta Flack and Natalie Cole amongst others and is a multi -instrumentalist, song writer, musical director and producer. On the night the emphasis was not on Mo Pleasure, but on the band. For most of the evening, the focus was on the musicians and the vocalists.
The first set opened with a lengthy instrumental on which Luke Smith (keyboard), Michael Brown (guitar), Tuca Milan (Percussion), Jack Pollitt (Drums) and Jamie Michael Harris (sax) were all given plenty of opportunity to show their prowess together with Mo on bass. My wife and I have seen Luke and Michael play countless times over the last ten years and this was a reminder of just how good they are. It is easy to take their talent for granted.
After the opening instrumental, the band were joined by lead vocalist, Ivy Chanel, and backing vocalists, Nathan Lewis and Lois Graham. They sang ‘Free’ (made famous by Deniece Williams), Ivy’s own ‘Carried Away’ and Mo’s ‘Crusin’ which featured in Spike Lee’s movie ‘Get On The Bus’ and was co-written with Phillip Bailey. That song ended the first set.
The musicians returned to play the Average White Band’s ‘Pick Up The Pieces’ with Mark Mondesir, one of the world’s great drummers, taking Jack Pollitt’s place. Mo had been a member of this band for a time.
Ivy then returned to the stage to sing Mo’s ‘Now That I’ve Found You with Jack back on drums. Mo, for once, was the centre of attention as he played the lengthy piano intro to the song. This showed that he is a wonderful pianist (Luke played bass on this song). It is a spectacular song and showed just how good a singer Ivy is, It demonstrated her range, power and control.
Three Luke Smith songs followed, ”True Love’, ‘Think Before You Leave’ and ‘Coming Home’. The audience saw that Luke can not only play keyboards and bass, but he is also a good song-writer. Ivy and Nathan then sang ‘The Closer I Get To You’ before the show closed with Michael Jackson’s ‘Rock With You’.
The band received a very warm, well deserved, ovation from the audience.
Johns London Music Reviews 