★★★☆☆
Marcos Valle probably didn’t expect to get a football heckle during his show, but then he made the mistake of mentioning that ultra-expensive striker Neymar in the introduction to Parabéns, a thank you of sorts for Antônio Carlos Jobim, João Gilberto and the other good things in life. Up piped a punter who was determined to let us know that the aforesaid god of the terraces was madly overrated.
Valle smiled serenely and sailed on. At the age of 73, the Brazilian singer-songwriter, his long blond hair and beard turning grey, still has the slightly dissipated air of a Scandinavian hippy who has spent a long night strumming a guitar on Copacabana beach. Half a century after he recorded his first bossa nova hits, he has found a youthful new audience with the help of the sampling industry and an easygoing collaboration with that hugely popular singer Stacey Kent, not to mention his ability to keep turning out genial pop tunes.
His elegant compositions, often embellished with sinuous funk riffs, were sturdy enough to withstand some brusque treatment at Ronnie Scott’s. Switching between acoustic and electric piano, he led a quartet in which the trumpeter and flugelhorn player Jessé Sadoc was required to do most of the solo work. For all Sadoc’s efforts, the pieces began to slip into a predictable pattern, not helped by problems with Renato “Massa” Calmon’s kick drum.
Valle, though, remained a courtly, unassuming host, even if his voice was showing its age on songs such as Samba de Verão (delivered partly in English as “Summer Samba”). The pace quickened whenever his wife, Patricia Alvi, joined him on stage, her crisp vocals providing a counterbalance to Sadoc’s trumpet. Estrelar and Baby Don’t Stop Me carried us back in the direction of a sweaty r’n’b dancefloor, circa 1984. Valle sat at the centre of it all, cool and calm.