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For a few hours on Friday evening, 26th February, the atmosphere in the Lounge was transformed into that of the Hot Club of France as the Mazaika Duo entertained members, replete after an excellent three-course meal, with seventeen songs from their extensive repertoire. Sarah Harrison's virtuosity as a jazz violinist shone through as she played Stephane Grappelli's "All of Me", "Minor Swing" and "Blue Drag", accompanied by husband Igor Outkine on a midi accordion which he was able to make sound wondrously like Django Reinhardt's guitar!
In addition to Hot Club swing, the audience was mesmerised and delighted by the wide range of musical genres performed, from classical showpieces (Rimsky-Korsakov, Rodrigo), Neapolitan songs (including Mario Lanza's "Because You're Mine"), opera arias (for example, "La Donna e Mobile"), Russian folk songs ("Kalinka", of course), breathtaking Gypsy fiddle music, Argentinian and Russian tangos. Sarah was even able to recreate the sound of birdsong on the Hungarian gypsy tune, "The Lark", and to convert her violin into a banjo for the Cotton Club standard, "Dinah".
Meanwhile Igor, who reprised his soulful performance from the 2007 film Eastern Promises of the Russian gypsy song "Dark Eyes", was constantly simulating on his accordion a variety of instrumental sounds to suit the mood, including bass, clarinet and even the bagpipes! His running joke throughout this outstanding musical cabaret was that he would be quite happy to spend his time just playing and singing the whole score of "Mamma Mia", and he slightly achieved his ambition with "Fernando" and as a final encore "Dancing Queen". The whole audience responded with great enthusiasm to this unconventional yet exciting marriage of Sarah's masterful violin-playing and Igor's versatility with voice and accordion. This Musical Evening was a huge success and Gordon Musk deserves our utmost praise for its impressive organisation.
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