Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Musical relief in this session comes courtesy of the British pop and jazz-pop singer-songwriter Jamie Cullum, supported by his brother Ben on bass and Brad Webb on drums. The first song, he tells us, “is about a boy at school who couldn’t get noticed by any of the girls, so he decided to become very famous and show them what they were missing.” He waits a beat before adding, “It is not remotely autobiographical. I was very popular at school, I’ll have you know.”

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

And off we go as he plays piano with a swagger, even climbing on top of it at one point in order to leap off again. He uses a large empty water bottle as a hand drum. He follows up with two wildly reimagined covers: “Pure Imagination” by Anthony Newley, and a dance-ified “Love for Sale,” by Cole Porter.