Live Music

How did we get to thinking recorded music is the same as live music?  That listening in a one-way receiving relationship through streaming, radio, television is the same experience as being present to living music through all the senses? It is easy to ask that after experiencing Kurt Elling live last night at the Performing Arts Centre in St. Catharines.  Big presence, big voice in a shiny silk suit.  Bringing us the earlier days of Jazz and today's music.  His facial features have some similarities to Richard Nixon's - as we wanted Richard Nixon to be.   I looked up the concert tour, as he made a point of describing it as packed - upcoming concerts in the 2020-2021 tour zig zag all over the place.  Next week he's in Miami, the week after in Palm Desert,  then Indiana, Pittsburg, and back to Markham in April. His concert tour will switch over in April - to the new recording "Secrets Are The Best Stories" with pianist Danilo Perez.  I expect this will be a change from what we enjoyed - lots of scat singing,  some Swingle Singers styling, crooning like Frank Sinatra, and revising lyrics liberally (Pennies from Heaven became Benny's from Heaven - based on the intro of a war veteran who returns home to find his wife with Baby Benny, and when he asks where is Benny from?  She says: From Heaven...Benny's From Heaven).  The finale was an extended version of Nature Boy - a mesmerizing interpretation of this already haunting song and lyrics. I checked around to find out what writers put in print about his singing and style.  Only a few brave writers put words to paper - the less brave give background facts from his website (if you ask me):  - Renowned for his singular combination of robust swing and poetic insight - Elling’s rich, chewy baritone – and his easy-swinging, ring-a-ding-ding delivery on the Great American Songbook - it’s about the groove he creates on stage I mention the live performance experience - Elling has something to say about this: I was lucky enough to go to the clubs. I realised, oh my goodness, there’s a whole culture around this: men and women living this life. That’s when I found out it was a living entity. I noted his comments on travel -  here is a Huffington Post article The Jazz Singer Off Road:  Kurt Elling.  Barry Singer points out this travel bug:  "Kurt Elling takes the jazz singer’s travel truism to a longitudinal and latitudinal extreme. Where most jazz singers tour, Elling traverses the globe." So I guess the lesson from yesterday is straight-forward:  spend more time at live events.  Here's a pretty scene from the Sundance Layout.

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Blue is a Group

Blue Man Group (there's no "The" in the name) played in St. Catharines yesterday and we saw a performance. I had thought the theatre group started 20 years ago - it was actually in 1987.  This Group started as a street performance/disturbance event in NYC.  It was so creative that it immediately developed into small shows and by 1991 full performances.  It took the creative word by storm and continues to enchant with its disturbances. 

Cirque du Soleil now owns Blue Man Productions. The performance was definitely in the Cirque clown tradition with innocence, nativity, self-consciousness and the outsider - where one of the group of three performs in a manner inconsistent with the other two.  The Wikipedia entry covers the Blue Man dynamic.  The themes centre on science and technology - especially plumbing, fractals, human sight, DNA and the Internet.  Then there are the themes of information overload, innocence, self-conscious, naivety, the outsider, and rooftops (!).  All of these themes were in the show yesterday.  

At the end of the shows everyone was heading up the stairs rather than down the stairs to the outside.  They were heading to the boutique where blue man stuff is for sale - blue ducks, ponchos (as worn by the front section of the audience), lunch sacks, t-shirts, their albums - lots of stuff.  There aren't any products on their website. If you want to see some great images - this is the website.  The website content is very limited:  One can audition to be a Blue Man performer in Los Angeles at the end of March - Height Requirement 5'10" to 6'2", Body type:  Athletic build.  One can buy tickets.  The website is geared to selling tickets and hiring Blue Men. 

My iPhone is an earlier model so the noise and pixelation is always present.  Many of the kids around me were looking at their phones for messages from 'afar and away.'  My phone was looking into the room to get these inside messages. They were visually amazing.