St. Giles Church in the north of Oxford is a wonderful consecrated building from the 12th and 13th centuries, and typically used for worship and prayer. Tonight, it vibrated with the most energetic and hot-blooded gypsy jazz.

“Shall we go straight in?” were the words Ben Holder used to open his performance with ‘Lady Be Good’. But the gig was not going to have the nature of a religious speech. Ben Holder was not preaching but baring his soul, and so giving the audience an overwhelming sense of his energy and fervor.

Stewart Carter Smith and Jez Cook both accompanied Holder, each possessing a singular look of deep concentration and a hidden pleasant smile, playing their Maccaferri guitars steadily, sharing with us their devotion to jazz. Paul Jefferies on bass was as excellent as always, showing great mastery and experience. The church’s ancient throat gave forth a jazzy wail tonight.

Holder’s violin is not the small, light and delicate instrument that we might think of when we visualize it in a classical setting. When he plays it, it becomes an extension of his very energetic and unstoppable body, as if Holder were leading it into a dance of fire with the expedite movements of his arms and irrepressible stamping of his legs.

Holder introduced each piece with jokes, witty comments and anecdotes. We enjoyed a fantastic and very international set with music of Brazilian, French, Spanish, Jewish and even Ukrainian origin and we were also lucky enough to hear Holder’s singing voice resounding in fine fettle.

In the second half he transported us to a gypsy jazz festival in France “around the fire”. Somehow his position between the altar and the grand organ of the church brought a more potent sense to the performance. His music felt more gypsy in that moment. When they had finished, and I noticed the light coming from the stained-glass windows, it was difficult to believe that those were not the first rays of the morning sun after a fantastic night at a jazz festival somewhere far away.

It was a show that my seven-year-old daughter simply won’t forget. She loved the music, the expressions on the faces of the performers and the audience, Holder’s desire to get closer to his audience and especially the great energy of his music.

If there was something to be learnt from this experience it was that music must be done with freedom and extraordinary passion. This kind of thing has not always been permitted in orthodox religious settings, but tonight it certainly was. Did it have the character of a religious experience? That depends on how you define religion. To me it did.