MikePadgett.com

Omara Portuondo

— When the singer isn't feeling it, a gig can become an ordeal.”

At the time of writing, the Cuban singer is seventy eight years old and when she wants to, she can still belt them out. There just wasn’t much cause to do so this evening.

Before a rather small crowd in Brussels’ crummy Cirque Royale, which these days shares more in common with Morley Con Club than it does with the Big Top, Portuondo tried to raise the temperature to lukewarm and more or less succeeded to the relief of many slightly embarassed spectators.

Her band, who could have well have done a residency at the Morley Con Club, was very patchy and seemed unrehearsed. Consistently incapable of matching Portuondo’s improvisational approach to standard songs, they struggled as individual musicians to pull together. The pianist bashed away at his Steinway, not without skill, but hopelessly without context; the guitarist and percussionist were equivocal at best; the double-bassist, to be fair was a swan surrounded by ducks. The gum-chewing drummer, plucked from Ipanema and probably handy with a beach ball if not a drumkit, was so self-absorbed that he may as well have been playing at a different gig.

Omara Portuondo, wearing what looked like a pink dressing gown and pyjama combo, seemed so disconnected at times that it felt like visiting your slightly mad granny. Either the star of Buena Vista Social Club was coasting through a tough night and a wooden crowd, or she needs to sack the band and take a well-earned holiday. And I for one wouldn’t blame her at all.