This is my life

Last night, mycrazyhair & I went to see zoarazul in the spring QuodLibet concert, and enjoyed some absolutely wonderful music.

It was all sacred music this time round, and all of it was good. The highlight for me had to be a version of Ave Maria by Franz Biebl that was absolutely breathtaking, although the Alleluia by Jean Berger was also wonderful.

There's something about beautiful harmonies done by beautiful voices that just transports me. The main reason I kept singing in my Church choir long after I started questioning my faith is that music touches the divine, for me. I may not have believed everything in the service, but I was always sure that God was in the music.

Last night reminded me of that.

Beautiful.

Short Form: mycrazyhair & I made it to the Dar Williams concert at the Church of the Redeemer last night, and it was all good.

A little more detail:
It was really nice to see her perform again - I haven't seen her perform since the Ottawa Folk Festival a couple of years ago. She looked great, and she sounded even better. It was a solo acoustic set, unlike her tour of the States earlier this fall. Just her and a guitar, and I thought it sounded fabulous.

I didn't keep a set list, but from what I can remember? She did a fair number of songs from the new album, and I realized that I like them a lot more than I thought I did. You Rise and Meet the Day for instance - as a quiet, acoustic performance, it's a beautiful love song, but I never got that from the album version. I should have, but the slickness of the production on the album somehow seems to diminish the emotion behind the song. Anyway, I loved the performance of it last night.

As I expected, she did a number of songs from the new album - Close to my Heart, Teen for God, Empire, and Beautiful Enemy, with The Hudson as a requested encore.

My favorites of the evening, though, were her earlier stuff. She asked people to sing along on The Christians and the Pagans, which was fun. The only people I could hear singing, though, were myself & mycrazyhair, which was a little disappointing. Maybe because we were in a Church? When I was a Boy made me choke up, as it always does. February was haunting.

There were lots of little anecdotes between the songs, as usual. I did like her description of the weight and palatte of certain cites, the greyness that big cities have, and the beauty that can be found there.

The audience was a little weird - it appeared full, but it was the quietest concert crowd I've ever been in. Maybe that's a result having it in a church. I mean, I know we're nice, sedate Canadians, but still...

She's a great performer, so I'm very glad I made it last night.

For my third (!!) post of the day, I thought I'd look at some songs...

So as directed by dglenn, by way of much_ado,
The instructions:

Go to MusicOutfitters.com.
In the Search box, enter the year you graduated high school.
The first item returned should be the 100 most popular songs from that year. Cut and paste them into your journal.
Bold the ones you like.
Underline your favorite.
Strike through the songs you loathe.

( My list )

To sum up: Another great concert by these guys. High energy, lots of fun.

( A little more detail... )

Wow.

What a fabulous concert. It easily made my all-time top 5, and maybe even my top three. Prince is unbelievably charismatic in person, even if your seats are in the upper bowl. For someone who seems so misanthropic, he sure knows how to work a crowd. And, he was funny!

He played more than 30 songs, over almost 3 hours. 6 of these I didn't know - I think one was improv, and I've identified 2 more as definitely being on Musicology. I'll have to listen to the CD and see if I can identify the others, as well.

( Favorite moments )

Since whynotsteve asked, I managed to write down a ( set list )

The energy levels from the crowd were fantastic. I spent most of the night on my feet, dancing and singing. So much fun. The only song I was expecting to hear and didn't was 1999.

Definitely worth the $80. If you can manage to see him, go.