Juliet Kelly, who has now made three albums, is a prolific song writer as well as one of the most respected younger singers on the jazz scene. Her compositions have a colourful mix of humour and sensuality that gives them an immediacy and attraction that is not easy to master in a area of jazz that can easily swing between the banal and the opaque. But the true depth of her talent as a singer is more easily judged from her treatment of jazz standards.

She started the evening with a rendition of Nina Simone’s classic, I Put a Spell on You, in which she artfully side-stepped Simone’s harsh yet majestic delivery to give the song a lighter, more heartfelt message. In the second half her rendition of Ellington’s Mood Indigo was equally personal but with an added twist of emotion that also came out strongly in Annie Lennox’s wonderful Here Comes the Rain Again, in which Kelly with her own rich inventive phrasing brought the hairs up on the back of the neck just as Lennox does but without doing a craven imitation of the original.

Kelly was backed by a particularly strong trio of Carl Orr on guitar, Oli Hayhurst, bass and Pat Illingworth, drums. Carl Orr’s years both in the studio and with some of the best on the international jazz scene has provided him with not just a wonderful technique but also a vast range of response. His solos were always perfectly suited to the tenor of the song moving effortlessly from complex chorded passages to fleet upbeat bursts that never gave a sense of repetition. Pat Illingworth, who played the perfect backing drummer most of the evening, played a driving intro to Ellington’s Caravan, another classic in which Kelly showed her style. Oli Hayhurst was, as always, the perfect bass player, with some imaginative solos and a couple of exquisite duo passages with Kelly.

Kelly may not have the hard drive that some jazz fans crave but as a singer she has immaculate delivery and phrasing and writes songs that can bear repeated listening. Altogether another class act at the Spin. Paul Medley