When does a cover version cease to be an attempt to cash in and instead become an act of creative reinvention? Cynthia Erivo’s Proms concert, Legendary Voices, was a heartfelt tribute to voices that she admired and which had helped her find her own vocal style. She is as much an actor as a singer and has won awards aplenty, including for playing Aretha Franklin; in this, her Proms debut, she took on roles as a singer rather than as an actor.
Her ‘band’ was the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Edwin Outwater, and a very big band it proved to be: there were, for example, no fewer than seven percussionists, more than enough for a Mahler symphony let alone a concert by a 21st century soul singer. That became more of a problem the longer the concert went on.
