From the Steinway Festival in The Times on 30 March 2012:
"... Mason and DeRose, pausing for an interval so short as to be almost imperceptible, launched into a powerful version of Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil. Their attack, use of the keyboard, involvement of different tonal and rhythmic devices, and their empathy for one another, was of a different order. Mason’s stabbing, chordal attack was matched by DeRose’s flowing, inventive flights of fancy. By the time they had dived into their second piece, a raunchy blues, featuring DeRose’s singing of Shirley Horn’s lyric Don’t be on the Outside, they had gripped the audience’s attention, and even those putting on their coats to dash for the last train or Tube lingered a little longer to hear such inviting musical chemistry in action."

Dena DeRose / Janette Mason Pizza Express, W1

Byline: Alyn Shipton