Your last concert was to see who and when?

Just saw Yuko Mabuchi (again!), this time at the Vibrato Grill in Bel Air, California. With Yuko were her trio mates, Del Atkins (bass) and Bobby Breton (drums), as well as guest Robert Kyle (saxes and flute).

They put together a polished, elegant set with controlled intensity and artful nuance. This playlist included jazz interpretations of three Antonio Carlos Jobim works and Yuko’s own Waves, all rendered beautifully.

Yuko pounded the ivories with energy, skill, and creativity. A prodigy indeed. As before, Robert Kyle was a great complement to the trio. And the Vibrato was a lovely venue for the evening.

I recently saw the Rock Hill Symphony Orchestra play at the Rawlinson Road Middle School Auditorium.

As pedestrian as that sounds it was remarkable in a number of ways:

1) It was the inaugural concert of our new local symphony which was created when many smaller orchestras are going under. And this in a small but rapidly growing, former mill city in South Carolina. It was sold out as is the rest of the 3 concert season. Expenses have been met by ticket sales and local benefactors.

2) The newly built Rawlinson Road Middle School auditorium has amazing acoustics!

3) The performance was really quite good. Which is not surprising since regional musicians are looking for work. We drew from the Charlotte and Atlanta region. There were no try-outs. The conductor (from New York) was able to hand pick.

4) My sister-in-law is on the board and my wife is on the advisory committee. This was truly a grass roots effort.

5) It now has the mayor and other large benefactors realizing that their tenuous plans to build a performing arts center is now not only do-able, but critical.

Anyway, live, high quality classical performances by excellent musician in Rock Hill, SC. Who would have ever believed it?

@n80,

Thanks for sharing!

Van Morrison - Last week. It was fun but strange as hell. Van came out spoke no words between songs, grinded out 15 songs back-to-back-to-back. Walked off stage halfway through the last song (G-L-O-R-I-A), lights went up and that was that. He still sounds like Van only he may well have just been mumbling "Chicken" all night...

I went to Paul Simon's last concert on Saturday. It was a disappointment. I had great hopes. It was a good concert but nothing special. He seemed happy to be finished, rather than celebrating. I thought there might be special guests but there weren't. He did Bridge Over Troubled Water and introduced it saying that he got his baby back (dissing Art Garfunkel). The crowd was stoned, pushy and unpleasant. It was filmed and probably will show up on PBS. At least you will be able to sit in a comfortable chair without people stepping on you. The review in the NY Times was similar to my opinion.