The 2015 Emirates Airline Dubai Jazz Festival could not have got off to a more sensational start than when multi-platinum selling singer-songwriter James Blunt and YouTube sensation Christina Perri combined to wow an ecstatic crowd of over 10,000 under a starlit night sky at the Dubai Media City amphitheatre.
Wearing sparkling sequinned tights under a short black skirt with an elegant white blouse, 28-year-old Perri kicked-off the 13-year-old festival with a soulful rendition of her first hit Jar of Hearts, a song that catapulted her from obscurity to the upper echelons of the music charts in 2010.
Skilfully combining dreamy ballads liked Human with happy pieces like Bluebird and the soaring Burning Gold the Los Angeles-based singer/ songwriter delivered a fun-filled 60-minute set.
A performance of the night came when she sang the beautiful A Thousand Years, a song that has scored a staggering 250,000,000 hits on YouTube.
“Dubai, are you having fun?” she screamed at one point, before adding a child-like, “Me too!”.
Perri had done a great job by setting the mood for Blunt to cash in on and the You’re Beautiful sensation certainly did when he launched his set with the soul-searching Face The Sun, the lead single from his 2013 release Moon Landing.
The former British Army officer, who is renowned for his phenomenal vocal range and trademark falsetto upsurges, entertained with a mixture of melancholic renderings of Postcards and Satellites before bringing the house down with a powerhouse version of Heart to Heart, also from Moon Landing.
Dressed in jeans and a short grey T-shirt that could have been bought from a Primark store, the 41-year-old Blunt raced though his catalogue of catchy ballads which accompanying himself on the piano or the ukulele, which he joked was his bedmate.
Blunt, who had the crowd in splits with his witty banter, was clearly enjoying himself in what was his third consecutive appearance at the Jazz Festival.
His performance touched a high point when he sang a peerless version of You’re Beautiful, his most successful song to date, as hundreds of illuminated mobiles lit up the audience.
It was an enchanting moment and the perfect culmination of a great night’s entertainment.
