Recent Concerts You've Enjoyed

Thought this might be a fun thread and a way to find out about acts on tour.

My wife and I saw the Smoke Fairies at the Tractor Tavern last evening as the opening act for Rasputina. The Smoke Fairies are a 'folk blues' duo from Wales and have been described as "Bob Dylan's dream." I thought that their debut release "Through Low Light and Trees" was one of last year's best. It was just the two principles singing and playing guitar. Really terrific concert with excellent acoustics and thankfully not too loud.

If you are ever in Seattle, the Tractor Tavern is a great venue in the Ballard neighborhood. Very fun people watching...I think my wife and I were the only ones without tattoos! I got to chat with them after their set and had my LP signed. I love the lilting Welsh accents!

Here's a video of "Hotel Room" from their debut LP:

[video]

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The accolades for David Bryne’s show “American Utopia” now playing for a limited run at the Hudson Theater in NY keep rolling in. “Dazzling, jubilant and raptuous”cried the NY Times and “an experience like no other” said Billboard. This is no fake news. If you are a fan of David Bryne, it is easy to understand why this is a once in a generational, and even a once in a lifetime performance. For those of you unfamiliar with Byrne, he was the leader of the rock group “Talking Heads” back in the mid 70’s, where I first made their acquaintance. On a personal note, the band’s music was a foundation of the music we often played at parties during med school to de-compress and was usually accompanied with the usual imbibements of the time.

It’s hard not to have a good time listening to the Talking Heads. They have a true “brand” characterized by songs loaded with infectious dance rhythms, superb instrumentation, and some of the oddest but fun lyrics this side of Mars. This is all attributable to it’s mastermind, David Bryne. His current show (really 90+ % musical) finds him performing some classics as well as some contemporary and new songs with a world class band of global musicians and vocalists that had the audience jumping, especially for the well-known favorites “Burnin’ down the house” “Slippery people” and “Stop making sense”. The show tonight was a one act tour de force that was brilliantly staged and incredibly well choreographed with a set that was minimalist but luminous. Bryne sings intensely and he’s no spring chicken so I have to wonder how long he can keep this up as it’s a physically exhausting evening for the performers, many of who are soaking wet by the time the show is over. It’s not often you get to see a legend. I was blown away. PS, notice the bare feet on all the performers.



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The Stop Making Sense concert video still holds plenty of water today. He is an incredible talent and only surrounds himself with the best on stage.
 
Saw Evegeniy Kissin playing Beethoven Sonatas a week ago at the KKL in Luzern. Phenomenal performance of some of my favorite piano music and the Sonics at the KKL are simply SOTA. Very emotionally engaging as well as technically perfect.
 
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It’s certainly been a good year for live concerts with Santana at Woodstock, Billy Joel at the Garden and David Bryne on Broadway. But for pure musical genius, it would be hard to top last Friday night’s performance of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones at the humble State Theater of New Jersey in New Brunswick. To begin, there are few concert venues in the world where you can get a seat 7th row center at a premier concert for a mere 75 bucks. Gotta love that part alone!

Bela Fleck is a musician of extraordinary abilities. He crosses boundaries as easily as birds fly. Bluegrass and jazz are his mainstays, but he is so equally conversant in international, African, blues and folk that you can’t pigeonhole his style. And when he plays with his namesake band of “Flecktones”, as he has been doing for 30 years, the magic that results from a meeting of these musical minds is utterly indescribable and unique. Although each virtuoso musician has played with other groups to explore their musical ideas, they have not toured together for many years, so their current tour is a reunion tour of sorts. What is clear is that “Flecktone” music only occurs when the the musical creativity and genius of these four individuals come together.

For those not familiar with the individuals, Bela plays the banjo, Howard Levy plays harmonica and keyboards, Victor Wooten is on the bass and his brother Ray is the percussionist who plays conventional drums plus some weird “drumitar” instrument he invented 30 years ago (hence his nickname “Future Man”). To call their music jazz is not adequate, except that the hallmark of jazz is improvision, which they all do with exceptional ability. They certainly rock out, but one almost never keeps time with them on the downbeat. They more typically use the syncopation time signature of jazz although, as I have said, they are stylistically all over the map. They even dabbled in seasonal Christmas music, but not surprisingly, in their cerebral Flecktone kind of way. For example, they did the “Twelve Days of Christmas” but with a Flecktone twist. Each day was done in a different key and a different time signature. As Bela said from the stage, “even the Rolling Stones would never attempt this, Springsteen would never do this” and then had some fun with it as he named 6 other groups who not only wouldn’t do it, but wouldn’t even think of it. Of course, the Flecktones did it as easily as we would sing Jingle Bells (which they also played- but in a more pure jazz version).

Each musician individually is a standard bearer for the art of their respective instruments. Levy is not just an incredibly talented jazz pianist, but the finest jazz harmonica player I have ever heard (that includes the great Toots Thielman, Antoinio Serrano and others). Victor Wooten is (along with Dave Holland) arguably the greatest jazz bassist on the planet. Future Man is an obscenely talented percussionist who I still can’t figure out how he gets the sounds he makes on his strange drumitar. And Bela is Bela. Listen and weep.

These guys not only made great music, but they had fun doing it. (Bela took out his iPhone, placed it on his amp, and Facetimed his son at home in Nashville so he could watch him perform. (Cute, although my guess is that it was not the first time they pulled off that trick).
The audience loved all of it, and of course wouldn’t let him leave the stage without an encore that included his most famous piece “Flight of the Cosmic Hippo” where Victor’s solo almost melted the stage. They’re mostly on the East coast for the last few months of their tour, but if at all possible, don’t miss them. Music making like this doesn’t come around very often.

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He is on the west coast in February but alone and not with the Flectoknes. To hear them play Flight of the Cosmic Hippo would have been worth the price of admission.
 
Just went to a "children's" christmas concert at the Zurich MAAG Tonhalle (temporary home until the real Tonhalle is finished refurbishment). We had good seats in the 6th row and the concert was played by the Zurich youth orchestra (very talented teenagers) and a large children's/teen's choir (over 200 adolescents). The performance from the orchestra was very professional the singing from the choir was ok and the sound quality was AWESOME. I still can't wrap my head around those claiming their systems sound better than what I heard live yesterday...I sure haven't heard a system that can do it and I have heard most of the best that's out there...new or vintage. For those who say you can't pin point locations of the musicians on stage should once in a while sit a bit closer...it was quite easy to pull out individual performers from the "mix".
 
Last night, Marty was kind enough to go see David Byrne's American Utopia, a stage adaptation of his tour of the same name, but according to Bryne aimed slightly more sophisticated for the NYC theater crowd. Marty chose our sets, 6th row dead center, which might be superceded by the same seats in the 7th row,

It might have been the best concert I have been to, and if not, definitely within the top three for me I bought the 2 record vinyl set and stayed up another 2 hours after getting home listening to them. Of course, Marty said, "why buy a vinyl recording of digital performance", and my only answer that I can give is I like using my Bergmann/Galder, ZYX Optimum combo.

Allegedly this is going to travel, although I cannot find the schedule, but if it comes near to you and you like Byrne's music, then just buy the tickets and consider something that cannot be missed.
 
The accolades for David Bryne’s show “American Utopia” now playing for a limited run at the Hudson Theater in NY keep rolling in. “Dazzling, jubilant and raptuous” cried the NY Times and “an experience like no other” said Billboard. This is no fake news. If you are a fan of David Bryne, it is easy to understand why this is a once in a generational, and even a once in a lifetime performance. For those of you unfamiliar with Byrne, he was the leader of the rock group “Talking Heads” back in the mid 70’s, where I first made their acquaintance. On a personal note, the band’s music was a foundation of the music we often played at parties during med school to de-compress and was usually accompanied with the usual imbibements of the time.

It’s hard not to have a good time listening to the Talking Heads. They have a true “brand” characterized by songs loaded with infectious dance rhythms, superb instrumentation, and some of the oddest but fun lyrics this side of Mars. This is all attributable to it’s mastermind, David Bryne. His current show (really 90+ % musical) finds him performing some classics as well as some contemporary and new songs with a world class band of global musicians and vocalists that had the audience jumping, especially for the well-known favorites “Burnin’ down the house” “Slippery people” and “Stop making sense”. The show tonight was a one act tour de force that was brilliantly staged and incredibly well choreographed with a set that was minimalist but luminous. Bryne sings intensely and he’s no spring chicken so I have to wonder how long he can keep this up as it’s a physically exhausting evening for the performers, many of who are soaking wet by the time the show is over. It’s not often you get to see a legend. I was blown away. PS, notice the bare feet on all the performers.

I thought the conception and execution of the show was fantastic. Great music, great presentation — the whole performance has a cool and engaging vibe.

It’s closing soon, 2/16 — if you’re anywhere near NYC drop everything and catch it. Hopefully there will be a video version down the road.
 
Last night, we saw Angelique Kidjo at the Sheldon in St. Louis. Great world music, high energy. She's an awesome performer. Highly recommended.
 
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Last night, we saw Angelique Kidjo at the Sheldon in St. Louis. Great world music, high energy. She's an awesome performer. Highly recommended.

I'm jealous. Lived in STL for 12 years (90-02) and loved going to the Sheldon- great hall. (Powell Hall is of course, also great). Kidjo rocks!
 
Tonight we saw Sarah McLachlan at Long Beach Terrace Theater.


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Mercifully, there was no opening act. Sarah McLachlan came on-stage at exactly 8:10 pm, sat down at the piano, and started playing and singing.

She sang, among other songs, Angel, Sweet Surrender, I Will Remember You, Building a Mystery, Adia, Ice Cream, Possession, Elsewhere and Good Enough.

Her performance was fantastic -- authentic, natural snd very real -- and with exactly all of the emotion and genuineness one would expect live based on the studio recordings.

This concert reminded me that she is one of my five favorite female artists of all time (along with Stevie Nicks, Karen Carpenter, Jennifer Warnes and Whitney Houston).

"Girl with guitar" reminds me of why I prefer planar loudspeakers.
 
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Miss live performances and very much looking forward to seeing Gordon Lightfoot at the reopening of Massey Hall in November.
Nothing on the horizon until then...
 

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