Duo Montparnasse, Mambo Cafe
We’re upstairs at one of my favourite Redditch venues in good company and the band we’ve come to see, Duo Montparnasse, have been chatting away to people in the audience.
But now it’s showtime and anyone who hasn’t heard them before is in for a treat.
The duo are singer Celine Dommart, born in France but now very much resident in Redditch, and local star Cris Tolley, and the style, billed as ‘French Chanson & Jazz’ in reality cuts across all genres and had the entire room swaying away within moments.
Dommart has a tremendous voice, powerful, strong, yet controlled and quickly makes the songs her own whether sung in English, Spanish or her native French.
Tolley, although standing in the background, shone through with some outstanding and intricate guitar work to the extent that it was hard to believe there was only the two on them on stage.
Classic ‘cafe’ songs were all covered, from ‘Besame Mucho’ to ‘La Vie En Rose’ in two sets before the twosome crowned a fine evening of entertainment with the Edith Piaf standard ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’. Tremendous.
