It’s one of the basic tensions in music: can it be that every 3/4 bar has a 4/4 bar secretly trying to escape from it? Or indeed vice versa? You might think that the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein song  My Favourite Things, with its simple melody involving mostly just three notes of the scale has had just about everything done to it. There’s a recent Godowsky-ish set of Victorian parlour variations by Stephen Hough, for example..

Think again.

Alison Beck, a London-based singer originally from the North-East, and one of the prime movers behind the 606 Gospel Group, gives the tune an unusual, refreshing, and as far as I am aware, original slant on her debut EP. Beck gives Malcolm Edmonstone the credit for the idea of putting My Favourite Things into 4/4. She scats energetically and musically over it, and brings it home safely, with subtle and imaginative support from Ed Blunt on piano, Jason Simpson, bass and Ben Reed drums.