Review | Stella Cole Quartet delivers delightful set of jazz and film classics in Hong Kong
Smooth, playful, dramatic and teasing, the Stella Cole Quartet gave its Xiqu Centre audience a night of all-American nostalgic glamour
Wit and warmth abounded in the Stella Cole Quartet’s run of four performances at Hong Kong’s Xiqu Centre.
A baker’s dozen of jazz standards and classic film favourites delivered over an hour proved an ideal format – well paced and polished, without a moment of slack. Meanwhile, the retro stylings of the bijoux Tea House Theatre mirrored Cole’s profile as a performer: an old soul in youthful form.
She sashayed into view in a midnight-blue satin gown, with cherry-red lips and white stiletto heels – a megawatt, doe-eyed, all-American vision of nostalgic glamour, backed by Michael Kanan on piano, Hank Allen-Barfield on drums and Mikey Migliore on bass.
Among the opening numbers, “Pure Imagination” was fitting for a set list that took the audience by the hand and led them to a rosier past, lit by Broadway marquees and post-war optimism. Cole’s languid rendition teased out the tune’s hazy melancholy beneath its dreamlike veneer.
It would take a particularly astute ear to guess that the 27-year-old native of the US state of Illinois is not classically trained. She studied theatre, but it was her TikTok takes on the Great American Songbook – influential American jazz standards and pop songs – during the pandemic that catapulted her to viral fame, and from there, onto New York’s jazz circuit.