Live at Lagny Jazz Festival

There aren’t many Cape Verdean diaspora artists with the audacity to segue between Cesaria Evora's ‘Sodade’ and the Sound of Music standard ‘My Favourite Things’ without missing a beat. Yet Carmen Souza carries it off as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And all in front of a less-than-animated Parisian audience, which she nevertheless valiantly attempts to cajole into life. Her dizzying articulation on Miles Davis’ bebop standard ‘Donna Lee’, for example, is truly something to hear. Unsurprisingly – this being a jazz festival after all – she also dusts down her definitive take on Horace Silver's ‘Song for My Father’, made all the more poignant given Silver's recent passing. Souza looks more at home than she does all night, ensconced behind her Fender Rhodes, banging out the great man's chords. And of course there's her equally mesmerising, self-penned chanson ‘Sous Le Ciel de Paris’ on which she sounds like a native. When she sings what, for her, comes closest to a traditional Cape Verdean morna in the shape of ‘6 On Na Tarrafal’, her voice flexes and folds into hitherto unknown strata of melancholy.