Alma Zygier: Premarital Sextet (Wharf 1 Theatre) ★★★★

Sydney Festival. Wharf 1 Theatre. 19-20 Jan, 2024.

Stepping away from the more theatrical side of Sydney Festival, I spent an early afternoon listening to Melbourian jazz singer Alma Zygier and her band reinterpret jazz classics with gusto in the Wharf 1 Theatre.

It all comes down to the voice, and Alma’s voice has an emotional range that defies her youth. Close your eyes and you’ll imagine a woman in the middle of her life, so steeped in experience and heartbreak are her songs. Instant touch points of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday spring to mind, but also the early pre-pop years of Amy Winehouse (with a similar rasp to her tone).

Together with her band, her Sydney Festival show is the Premarital Sextet, a name she is proud to have come up. It’s one of the more charming moments between songs. Zygier is not one for banter but her awkward, simple conversation has a human appeal. There is no pretence, the only performance is the music.

And the music is a non-stop hour of wonderful classics from the songbooks of George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter et al, with a side visit to reinterpret Big Mama Thorton’s (and later Elvis Presley’s) ‘Hound Dog’. A high energy rendition of Judy Garland classic ‘The Trolley Song’ balances the joy and camp required.

At the end of her crowd pleasing, but not pandering, set it’s clear that Alma Zygier is a vocal talent worth paying attention to. And I’ll be keeping an eye out for gigs in the future.