Review | Stella Cole Quartet delivers delightful set of jazz and film classics in Hong Kong

She sashayed into view in a midnight-blue satin gown, with cherry-red lips and white stiletto heels – a megawatt, doe-eyed, all-American vision of nostalgic glamour, backed by Michael Kanan on piano, Hank Allen-Barfield on drums and Mikey Migliore on bass.

Among the opening numbers, “Pure Imagination” was fitting for a set list that took the audience by the hand and led them to a rosier past, lit by Broadway marquees and post-war optimism. Cole’s languid rendition teased out the tune’s hazy melancholy beneath its dreamlike veneer.

It would take a particularly astute ear to guess that the 27-year-old native of the US state of Illinois is not classically trained. She studied theatre, but it was her TikTok takes on the Great American Songbook – influential American jazz standards and pop songs – during the pandemic that catapulted her to viral fame, and from there, onto New York’s jazz circuit.