The audience at The Greys last week were treated to the debut performance of a great artist and the valediction of another.

The low-key gig was the first for Dee Palmer, formerly David Palmer, musical arranger and keyboard player of the seminal English rock band Jethro Tull.

From the start, she dedicated the show to "ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and those, like me, who fall between the cracks".

Any danger the revelation of Palmer's metamorphosis would overshadow the evening was dispelled by her charming manner and musical brilliance.

Accompanying herself on a Yamaha electric piano, Palmer deftly switched between comic songs such as My Last Screw to Tull classics including Thick As A Brick and Elegy to more formal compositions such as Cathedral and Emmanuelle.

As a classically-trained musician, she clearly shares the aim of Tull leader Ian Anderson to compose popular songs with a classical framework.

She outlined this comically in I Don't Do Requests, which she composed as a tonic to having to earn her keep while a Royal Academy student playing the accompaniment to Soho strip shows.

She then demonstrated this on a practical note with her contrasting love songs Night In Spain and At The Still Point Of A Turning World.

An outstanding composer, passionate performer and an engaging raconteur, Palmer is on the road to another great musical career.