Joe Bonamassa has spent 32 years finessing the art of electric blues guitar and showed his mastery of the instrument to packed audiences during his two concerts at the Brighton Centre last week.

Bonamassa decided to learn guitar at the age of four when he was shown a film of Eric Clapton performing at the Cream farewell concert at the Albert Hall.

He performed with B. B. King at the age of 12 and has been recording and playing ever since.

His handling of the guitar was indeed truly astonishing but too much of the focus was on Bonamassa taking centre stage with yet another virtuoso guitar solo.

It is easy to get too much of a good thing.

Individually the backing musicians were truly skilled and each showed their virtuosity when they came out from behind the shadow of Bonamassa.

Some of the keyboard playing was a class above.

There was some great music – particularly the songs from the more recent album Different Shades Of Blue - but overall the performance lacked cohesion.

The melody was often weak and it was occasionally difficult to differentiate one song from the next.

Classic but not yet on a level with Clapton or BB King.

Three stars