Norah Jones: Live at Ronnie Scott's Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Norah Jones: Live at Ronnie Scott's Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 20, 2018

You might want to consider Norah Jones: Live at Ronnie Scott’s as something of a musical palate cleanser, especially if you’re prone to go for larger, arena rock like concert videos. This particular performance is absolutely minimalist from both a staging standpoint (as can probably be gleaned from the almost unavoidably repetitive screenshots accompanying this review), but also due to the fact that Jones is part of a trio. There’s a refreshing intimacy to this concert, one that harkens back to smoky jazz clubs of yore, with earnest chanteuses crooning songs of love and loss, but what sets this performance apart is the fact that Jones of course accompanies herself on piano, sings her own material, and has a really winningly winsome quality that doesn’t completely mask a kind of steely, if still sweet, foundation.

One of the coolest live concerts I ever attended as a kid featured George Harrison, Billy Preston (then enjoying a huge hit with “Nothing from Nothing”) and a certain internationally famous sitar player named Ravi Shankar. The Shankar portion of the concert was pretty astounding for my then young ears, and even watching the master’s elegant hands “traipse” around his exotic instrument was fascinating. Jones is of course Shankar’s daughter, and while she may not bring the same “world music” emphasis to her own offerings that her father was famous for doing, there’s a really appealing cross-genre approach to her music that rather effortlessly combines blues, pop, country and jazz.

The one drawback to this "small scale" hour and a half performance is that it is pretty relentlessly low key, with no true uptempo pieces, and perhaps a few too many ballad like offerings that roam around the same general beat per minute speeds and indeed even reside in the same general emotional state as well. If Jones' piano skills aren't going to threaten the reputations of titans like Bud Powell or Art Tatum, she has a nicely spare performance style that supports her sweetly smoky vocals beautifully. Christopher Thomas' bass work (both upright and electric) is excellent, and while Brian Blade's drum work is similarly technically sharp, he really doesn't have a ton to do on a lot of these tunes other than a bit of brush work.

Norah Jones: Live at Ronnie Scott's features the following tunes:

• 1. Sleeping Wild
• 2. Don't Be Denied
• 3. After the Fall
• 4. Sinkin' Soon
• 5. Out on the Road
• 6. And Then There Was You
• 7. It's a Wonderful Time for Love
• 8. Fleurette Africaine (African Flower)
• 9. Flipside
• 10. Day Breaks
• 11. Nightingale
• 12. Tragedy
• 13. Little Broken Hearts
• 14. Carry On
• 15. Don't Know Why
• 16. I've Got to See You Again

Norah Jones: Live at Ronnie Scott's Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Norah Jones: Live at Ronnie Scott's is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Vision, an imprint of Eagle Rock Entertainment, and Universal Music Group with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. This is technically a near flawless transfer, though that said, as (again) can be gleaned by the screenshots accompanying this review, there's little real visual "pop" to the proceedings. An upstage screen occasionally assumes different colors, often either reddish or kind of brownish, and that's about all there is to the "stagecraft" side of things. There are also not a ton of different cameras capturing this concert, and so framings tend to be pretty similar throughout, as well. When close-ups capture the players, there is consistently excellent detail, and the palette in terms of things like flesh tones always looks natural. The progressive presentation eliminates typical concert bugaboos like combing artifacts when hands quickly move on instruments or drumsticks zoom through the air. The one minor issue some may spot is some very minimal crush that intrudes. There are moments where the black backgrounds tend to swallow up elements like the corners of Jones' black dress, but even this is a passing and inconsistent anomaly, as there are some shots where variations in black tones are quite nicely delineated.

Norah Jones: Live at Ronnie Scott's Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Norah Jones: Live at Ronnie Scott's features LPCM 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks. The disc is authored to default to the stereo track, so those wanting the surround experience should have their remotes handy. The intimate nature of this concert may tend to make this 5.1 track a little less immersive than some other concert videos, but that said, there is a clear improvement in midrange and (especially) the lower end of things on the surround track, to the point that some of Thomas' work on acoustic bass kind of reaches "vibrational" levels on the DTS-HD Master Audio version that it doesn't quite attain on the LPCM version. Jones' vocals are exceptionally clear and nicely prioritized on both tracks, and the piano always sound secure, with no wavering or brittleness at all.

Norah Jones: Live at Ronnie Scott's Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interviews (1080p; 20:13) features an interview with Norah Jones being questioned by Paul Sexton. Jones is sweet and talkative here, but there's a lot of "arty" stylizing going on, with shots of cameras being set up and the like.


• Bonus Track: Burn (1080p; 5:36)

Norah Jones: Live at Ronnie Scott's Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Ronnie Scott's is one of the most iconic jazz clubs in the world, and it's a perfect venue for an "unplugged" concert from the almost always appealing Jones. I personally wish she would have included some more energetic material here, as almost all of these songs are mid-tempo ballad type pieces, and there's a certain sameness that starts to accrue, even given the inventiveness of the arrangements and uniformly excellent playing of the performers. The nice thing about this performance is there isn't a lot of needless chitchat, and Jones offers opportunities for her trio companions to stretch out here and there. Technical merits are first rate, the included interview quite winning, and Norah Jones: Live at Ronnie Scott's comes Recommended.