ELIO Pace arrived onstage with his five piece band and made the next two and a half hours simply whiz by.

Elio is probably better known to some of us as Terry Wogan’s Weekend With Wogan’s bandleader or as the wonderful Albert Lee’s former pianist, a position he held for three years and of which he is immensely proud.

He started off with one of his own compositions Oh So Tight and continued to dazzle us all with several more very upbeat songs of his own before acknowledging one of his heroes, Billy Joel who’s Get It Right The First Time he performed perfectly.

Delbert McClinton’s Two More Bottles Of Wine followed shortly after and Elio then told us all an amusing story about how he came to compose one of Albert Lee’s songs called Can Your Grandpa Rock and Roll Like This? a very snappy upbeat number.

Most of the pieces performed were Elios own but there were some excellent covers as well including songs by Willie Nelson, a wonderful version of On The Verge by Hugh Prestwood and others by Liebber and Stoller, Jerry Hubbard and Paul Simon.

The band were all highly skilled and one has to admire the two new arrivals Matt Weeks and Tom Wright on bass and guitar respectively.

Jeremy Rothman