The Museum of Garden History is probably one of the most unique places I’ve been yet for a gig. Hosted in the church of St-Mary-at-Lambeth tonight’s performers could take full advantage of the amazing acoustics that such a venue could provide. (Despite this there was a lot of faffing about at the beginning of the evening as the acts did sound check after sound check.)

It seems that this is not the first time that the Museum has hosted such and even. In fact this is the fifth year of a series of jazz festivals that Museum has hosted. Tonight it was Cuban Night featuring first up Robert Mitchell & Omar Puente and then second up Cubana Bop.

The venue as a gig sight is fairly interesting. Hot food, which is generally reasonbly priced and not at all junkie, is on offer as well as a fairly well stocked bar – stocked with wine and beer that is! There are quite a few tables set up (which are of course higher priced tickets) with plenty of standing room for the rest of us though it was awkward to find the best position to stand. Nevertheless it was Cuban Jazz Night so we weren’t expecting to be sitting for most of the perfomances.

Unfortunately the music wasn’t all that for dancing. The first act of Robert Mitchell and Omar Puente were … not great. Not at all what I expected I felt that the performance was self-indulgent and sometimes I was wondering if they were performaning for themselves or the audience. Or perhaps my taste is music wasn’t sophisticated enough to recognise rhythm in what they were presenting. Often the two went off into some improvisation piece that was neither pleasant on the ear nor enough to capture my interest. The second act, Cubana Bop, was much better and delivered much better pieces and to my surprise towards the end even had the mostly English crowd up on their feet. It was very much towards the end however.

Craig promised to continue the good times at Bar Thompson. See how happy everyone seems?