England’s Jamie Cullum lives up to British buzz

The Cullum clamor came to the Southland on Tuesday night. Arriving on a buzz of anticipation, English singer-pianist Jamie Cullum gave a rousing performance at Room 5 fully revealing why his first major label recording, “Twentysomething,” has been in Britain’s Top 10 charts for the last four weeks and has sold more than 800,000 copies there.

The diminutive, spiky-haired musician opened his set by simply singing, a cappella, the opening phrases of “I Get a Kick Out of You.” He soon exploded into a high-voltage transformation of the Cole Porter classic, backed by bassist Geoff Gascoyne and drummer Sebastiaan de Krom, occasionally standing on his piano bench, accenting rhythms with forearms and feet to the piano keyboard.

It forecast what was to come in the rest of the set, which contrasted galvanizing energies with touching intimacies. His song choice was equally far-reaching, reflecting Cullum’s disdain for lines of demarcation between genre or generation.

Building from a jazz foundation, but stretching in any direction he chose, he sang a stunning rendering of Oscar Levant and Edward Heyman’s “Blame It on My Youth,” following it with the Neptunes’ “Frontin’.” Jeff Buckley’s “Lover, You Should Have Come Over” and Jimi Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary” were juxtaposed against “Singin’ in the Rain” and Cullum’s whimsical but insightful anthem to his generation, “Twentysomething.”

Surprisingly, he omitted “These Are the Days,” an original written with his brother Ben -- already a hit single in Britain and a solid possibility for similar breakout success in the U.S. when the “Twentysomething” album is released in May.

But what he did play (for a packed house that included Herbie Hancock, Michael Buble and Diane Warren) was enough to justify the buzz for a performer who -- though still young and a bit rough -- has a distinct aura of crossover stardom.