Live Review: Bill Murray, Jan Vogler & Friends

Bill Murray is your charming yet inebriated uncle at a Christmas gathering. A gifted raconteur, a subtle and often devastating comic performer and an apparent dilettante, he blends his gifts with a borderline abrasive cavalier attitude to form a distinctly ‘Bill Murray’ character; he’s the guy you want to be around, but never be. His new foray into high art is not without faults, but the evening was imbued with a charm that's difficult to ignore and ultimately succeeded. 

To set the tone, Murray introduced himself with an excerpt from George Plimpton’s interview with Ernest Hemingway for the Paris Review, specifically a question regarding his history with playing music. In reply, renowned Berlin-born New York cellist Jan Vogler offered Bach’s Cello Suite No 1 (G Major), as familiar a piece of classical music as one could find. The sequence gave us an in, a safe space to acclimatise us to the next couple of hours.

Murray’s voice is a curious thing. Not really endowed with a sense of authority or wisdom in and of itself, it nonetheless commanded a sense of pathos in the concert hall, his naturally melancholy tone drifting and echoing around the space. 

A beautiful pairing of Murray reading James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer and the players covering Cooper’s contemporary Schubert was the highlight, with Cooper’s romantic, masculine prose worshipping North America’s natural landscape dovetailing wonderfully with Schubert’s airy sonata.

There were moments of tonal confusion that broke the spell; Murray’s rendition of Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair fell flat (literally and figuratively), and his version of Loch Lomond provoked some unintended laughter. Timing was a little off throughout the evening, but ultimately there was a lot for us to chew on. 

His take on the problematic (yet ultimately redemptive) Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn felt risky in the best way, and his hilarious version of Tom Waits’ The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) was sublimely ridiculous. Murray skipped through the crowd in the climax, distributing roses with glee to a frothing audience. 

It’s a pleasure to see a master at work, and this was a fascinating evening with Murray at the helm.