Kiki Dee and Carmelo Luggeri charm Glasbury audience (From Hereford Times)

Kiki Dee and Carmelo Luggeri charm Glasbury audience

2:06pm Tuesday 13th October 2009 in

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A BIG name, a small and intimate venue with a small and very appreciative audience ensured a big evening out for everyone lucky enough to catch Kiki Dee and guitarist Carmelo Luggeri at Gwernyfed High School Drama Studio last weekend.

Opening with the song that follows her everywhere, but in a subtle arrangement that demonstrated how long it is since she wore the pink dungarees in the video of Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, Kiki and Carmelo treated us to a selection of numbers we knew and numbers we didn’t - with tracks from their albums Where Rivers meet and Walk of Faith ensuring that after-show CD sales were brisk. The voice alone is stunning, but in combination with Carmelo’s virtuoso guitar playing and the warm, relaxed atmosphere they brought with them, this was indeed a musical coup for a small village on the borders.

Among the familiar numbers were a gorgeous cover of Kate Bush’s Running up that Hill, the beautiful Amoureuse, Kiki’s first big hit and, with some input from the audience, James Taylor’s liltingly lovely How Sweet it is to be Loved by You.

Carmelo has said that he and Kiki “want to have fun and create something uplifting,” and that exactly encapsulates the effect of an evening with the two of them, especially in their own compositions, which feel like the musical equivalent of the best therapy - all of them affirmations of the positive, and filled with hope and an assertion of everyone’s intrinsic value. Stand-out tracks for us were One and Only Love, one of those songs that was instantly familiar and known in spite of having never been heard before, and Under the Night Sky, a beautiful tribute to mothers and daughters - a stunning start to the 2009/2010 Glasbury Arts season.