Theatre 2016: Review Seventeen

Symphonic Queen, Royal Albert Hall, London. May 2016.

The music of Queen has been important in our family for as long as I can recall.  As a child all of us liked listening to their music and both my sister and I remember clearly the band's performance at Live Aid in the mid 1980s.  I think that the Innuendo album was one of the very first CDs that my dad bought for the new CD player.  We never managed to see the original line up in concert - forget world peace etc. I am pretty sure that the first thing my sister and I would do with a time machine is get ourselves to a Queen concert!

On a very warm May evening my mum, sister and I went out to the Royal Albert Hall for this event, and again at least two of us when in with the wrong idea as to what was going to happen.  I know that I expected a staid classical music performance of Queen's music.  What we got was close to a full on rock concert!

Yes the music was played by the full Royal Philharmonic Orchestra but they were joined by 3 rock musicians and eight incredible singers.  The music translated wonderfully into this hybrid mix and soon the full venue was rocking along to the sound.

Many of my favourite tracks were played and in between the music a very amusing Ken Bruce gave information about the band, songs and where they were used. It sounds corny but on the night it was great and we all came out buzzing and how well the music translated into this new sound is just testament to how good the original tracks were.

Theatre 2015: Review Twenty-Eight

The Simon and Garfunkel Story, The Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich. September 2015.

I've been a fan of Simon and Garfunkel's music for as long as I can remember,  influenced probably by my parents who had a lot of their music as I was growing up.  If I ever had the chance to go in a time machine their concert in Central Park in 1981 would be one of my first destinations - along with the Queen tour of 1986 - how shallow am I???

My companion and I weren't sure what we'd be experiencing at this show, another friend had seen it recently and was positive so we were hopeful. We were pretty much the youngest in the audience and our seat neighbour was borderline rude about C but we weren't that bothered as we were there for the show/music.

It is a very simple format, two men sing the songs of Simon and Garfunkel with the support of a drummer, keyboard player and bassist. A screen is visible behind the musicians and this shows a montage of images and films that reflect the music, America of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and also images of the duo themselves.  Simple but effective.

The voices of the two performers were pretty much perfect - if you shut your eyes you could easily convince yourself that you had the originals in front of you.  Even with your eyes open the pair had the mannerisms down pat and it was a surreal watch.

I loved every minute of this evening, it was like a sedate rock concert - fab music, lots of chance to hum along and I knew every song except two. I loved that the songs were interspersed with  little anecdotes about the duo or their music and that although it was a very affectionate telling of their story it also didn't gloss over some of the problems.

Both of us wanted there to be more than one performance, and I think that we'd have booked straightaway to see this again - rumour has it that it may be back  in Norfolk early in 2016, I think we'll be there!