Countermeasures The Boards, Edinburgh Playhouse

Such a fantastic show! A group of super talented individuals from Toronto, Canada called Countermeasures gave us a show that was packed with some fabulous and beautifully sung songs, both from their native Canada and also some from the UK.

It was also a pleasure to be able to have Aaron Jensen on the phone for an interview on our radio show, and we would welcome them back anytime that they were in Scotland, furthermore it was a pleasure to meet Aaron, J-M and their press manager Pat.

This show can be described as: light hearted entertainment but yet very enjoyable and funny, with beautifully arranged songs by Aaron that fitted each singer’s vocal range. What made the songs even more beautiful was that there was different people taking the solo parts rather than one person out of the entire group, and woven in with that was that the group were having a fantastic time performing – even able to have a laugh at their own expense. Even the interesting and slightly funny take on Barry Manilow’s Copacabana was fantastic as they approached three different audience members had them come up on stage and sit on chairs to be part of the song by replacing a small part of the lyric “Her name was Lola” with the name of the audience member, and later dancing with different members of the group followed by a conga!

Another great part of the evening, was during the interval whilst the rest of the group were cooling down was that Aaron and J-M took the opportunity to come and speak to different members of audience and get a little feedback to how they found the first half of the show. This was also the case at the end of the show when the entire group, after an fabulous finale and encore took the time to speak to people and to get feedback about the show as they began to take down their equipment and later they took the time to sign autographs for people which I thought was a lovely thing for them to do. They were also true ambassadors for Canada as they included some fun trivia in the act.

The only small criticism that I would make of the show would be the choice in venue, I feel they could have risked maybe a bigger room that might have worked better for them in terms of acoustics, but in fairness they did make the room that they were in work for them. Furthermore credit is due to their lighting and sound engineers who did a fantastic job on the night, particularly the lighting technician who created fantastic mood lightingthat worked for each song.

So how can I sum up this review on a fantastic acapella group? Well it’s in one way only – I would recommend anyone to either go and see one of their shows or take any chance they can to listen to their music, because they are a super talented group, led by the genius of Aaron Jensen. I can predict that they would go down an absolute storm in front of large audiences that had different tastes in music as they offer something for everyone and not just one style of music.

So watch out world because here they come! We were glad to hear that they had a fabulous time whilst in Edinburgh and we would love to see them return in the years to come.

Ben Dyson & Jamie Michael Wells