Phronesis: Ivo Neame, Jasper Hoiby, Anton Eger Album Lunch. Kings Place Hall One, May 2012 Photo Credit: Roger Thomas

A genuinely happy occasion. Phronesis played the music of the album Walking Dark to a virtually packed Hall One at Kings Place last night. “Wow!” was Jasper Hoiby’s first greeting. He was celebrating the fact that so many people had eschued the evening of Balkan cross-border diplomacy of the Eurovision Song Contest, and a summer evening, to come out to Kings Place.

Ivo Neame Had written on Twitter earlier: “I’m going to play a lot of notes tonite as well so you’ll definitely be getting your money’s worth.” It stayed in the mind. Hoiby and Eger give Neame the ideal context when this group to have total freedom to keep you guessing when those volleys of notes will get launched, to anticipate, delay, wrong-foot. And he gives the others back all  the shades and colours, the imagination, the flights of fancy they could ask for. As I witnessed this moment of triumph, I couldn’t avoid the though that Phronesis are what a European vision based in Europe’s world city should all be about.