★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Jade. 20 Feb 2026
Nick Parnell is one of the best vibraphone players around. He’s South Australian born and bred, but the world is his stage. Even though he’s performed with some of the best orchestras and conductors here and abroad on elite concert stages, he’s also happy performing in clubs or al fresco venues. He is unassuming, almost shy, but, as a musician, he is bold and fearless.
Instrumental art-music concerts staged in the Fringe frequently lack the pizzaz and audacity of other events, and border on being ‘polite’ and ‘safe’. Parnell’s concert, entitled Home, is a case in point: it doesn’t have ’razzle and dazzle‘, but it is relaxed and the emphasis is squarely on the music, the allure of the vibraphone, and particularly on Parnell’s consummate skill as both a player and an arranger.
Parnell explains that the concert program derives from his soon to be released fourth album and the music selections invoke feelings of being home, wherever and whatever that means. The program includes arrangements of well-known folk songs like Scarborough Fair and Danny Boy, as well as iconic numbers like I Still Call Australia Home and Amazing Grace. But it’s not only ‘popular’ music that receives the Parnell treatment. He also includes classical favourites like Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1, excerpts from Bach, and more recent art music such as by Brazilian composer Ney Rosauro, one of today’s most significant composers for percussion, which proved to be a favourite of the capacity crowd in the Jade.
For me, Parnell’s performance of Gary Burton’s 1959 composition A Singing Song was just sublime. Parnell demonstrated his command of the instrument and of 4-mallet playing, as well as his intuitive feel for jazz inflected rhythms that makes the music sound like it is being composed for the very first time.
Not all of Parnell’s arrangements are as compelling as others: his extended Scarborough Fair was revelatory, but Danny Boy sounded too detached and lacked the mellifluousness and pathos that strings can give. I Still Call Australia Home included evocative and enjoyable mystical nods to Aboriginal dreaming, but Gnossienne was given much rubato, perhaps too much, and grace notes were cut alarmingly short. But it’s all a matter of taste.
Parnell doesn’t need the razzle and dazzle that is so often on show in the Fringe and sometimes relied upon by lesser performers to disguise shortcomings in technique and style. Parnell simply lets his polished world-class technique and thoughtful musicality do the talking, and the audience just love it.
Kym Clayton
When: 20 Feb – One night only.
Where: The Jade
Bookings: Closed
