MELBOURNE CONCERT REVIEW IN THE AGE MAGAZINE
By Jessica Nicholas

Music
PIERRE BENSUSAN
The Toff in Town
Wednesday 15 April
Review by: JESSICA NICHOLAS

Pierre Bensusan released his debut album (Pres de Paris) in 1975, when he was still a teenager. Thirty-three years later, this much-admired musical voyager has finally reached Australian shores.

There were fans in the audience at the Toff in Town on Wednesday night who had waited several decades to see the French-Algerian guitarist – and judging by the wildly appreciative reaction to Wednesday’s concert, they were not disappointed.

Bensusan arrived on stage in a warm and expansive mood – a mood that resonated throughout his two generous sets. With or without his guitar, Bensusan is a natural communicator, and his charming between-song banter made us feel like friends gathered in his lounge room. His approach to the guitar combines the creativity of a jazz artist with the technical mastery of a classical musician, but Bensusan vigorously resists categorization.

His compositions dip in and out of various styles – folk, early music, North African and Latin American music – to create narratives that are often quite complex, yet follow their own internal logic.

The way Bensusan uses his voice is equally distinctive: sometimes to sing lyrics in French, but more often to create wordless scatting and percussive phrases that dance across the melody like conversational responses to the music.

The only downside to Wednesday’s show is that – at least from where I was sitting – the sound was so heavily amplified that it detracted from the sense of lightness created by Bensusan’s acoustic fingerstyle guitar playing. Still, there was more than enough warmth in his presentation to compensate for any acoustic imperfections. And I’ll hazard a guess that his Australian fans won’t have to wait another 30 years before he returns.