Concerts over the past year (part 2)

I'll just continue with the concerts where I finished in my post of November 8th last. 

Last May I went to Andy McKee with a friend who is also into guitarmusic. I'll wrote about Andy McKee before in a post on him and some other artists from record label CandyRat Records. It was the first time to see Andy McKee live and it sure was a treat to see him play live. Of course I already knew from his YouTube videos that he's an amazing guitar player, which was just confirmed by this live performance. It was just one man, one guitar and an audience. If you're good it's all you need. I enjoyed every minute of this concert. It was really great to see such a gifted player at work.

Eight days after Andy McKee my wife N. and I went to the SJU-huis, the local jazz club in our hometown to see Michiel Borstlap, a Dutch jazz pianist, who also gets foreign recognition and worked with great names in jazz like Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, Bill Bruford, George Duke and guitar legend Les Paul. He played work from his last gorgeous CD SOLO 2010, with, like the title suggests, solo work on the piano, mostly composed/improvised by Michiel Borstlap himself. I really like this album and the past months it's been played on my CD player and computer on a regular basis. Recommended! An excellent piano player and composer/improvisator and worthwhile a visit when he's touring near you.

A few weeks later on June 10th N. and I went to see Them Crooked Vultures, with Dave Grohl, drummer of Nirvana and frontman from the Foo Fighters, Josh Homme, founder of Kyuss and also founder member and frontman of his current band Queens of the Stone Age and John Paul Jones, bass player of the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin. It was pretty loud, but certainly not bad, but quite different from the introspective music from Michiel Borstlap.

Nine days later N. and I went to Muse. It was on the same day that Holland had to play against Japan at the world cup football in South Africa. When we booked the tickets for Muse we didn't realize the concert and the football match were on the same day. Although I'm not so fanatic about football anymore but when Holland is joining the worldcup I like to watch. And because my wife N. is Japanese, you can imagine why we would like to watch the game. Lucky enough the game was in the afternoon, so we manage to watch the game first and then took the train to Nijmegen where the concert was. It wasn't an easy game for Holland but they beat Japan 1-0 and it didn't cause a matrimonial crisis.

It was the first time for us to see Muse live. The Muse concert was quite a spectacle with a huge stage and big light show and also the sound was very good. Sometimes the sound on open air concerts can be a disaster but at the Muse concert the sound quality was much better than I expected. They gave a great show and they proved to be an excellent live band. The weather gods were kindly disposed to us, despite the bad weather forecast.

Below I uploaded

Concerts over the past year (part 1)

In my former post I already announced that I would give an update about the concerts that my wife N. and I went the past year in chronological order with a short review/comment. Of every concert I will embed some video (if available).

On November 30th last year we went to Depeche Mode at Ahoy, Rotterdam. Visiting this concert was a bit of a compensation for their cancellation of their performance at Pinkpop earlier that year due to illness of their lead singer Dave Gahan.

Although I never have been a huge fan of Depeche Mode, I like some of their singles like "Enjoy the silence", "Personal Jesus" (also like the Johnny Cash version) and "I feel You". And they have been unquestionably a major influence in electronic music. Although I didn't had extreme high expectations, the concert was much better than I expected. The sound was good, light show was excellent and their performance was energetic.

One week later we went to Rammstein at the Gelredome, Arnhem.

North Sea Jazz

A little bit late, but here are some videos which I found on YouTube with (parts of) performances that my wife N. and I saw at North Sea Jazz Festival 2009. I already posted some pics which I took at the festval on my photoweblog BrownNoisePhotos here, here and here.

I don't have the time to give extended reviews about the perfromances that we saw, but you must believe that we had a nice day and that we saw some great perfromances. Hopefully you can agree after seeing some of the videos that I've embedded.

You can see some video's from Akiko Yano & Hiromi Uehara, The John Scofield Piety Street band and from Michiel Borstlap, Han Bennink & Ernst Glerum. From Lang Lang and Herbie Hancock there is enough material on YouTube but nothing from their performance at North Sea Jazz. Herbie Hancock also did a very nice solo improvisation on his own composition Dolphin Dance from his classic album "Maiden Voyage", but unfortunately no material from this on YouTube.

Well I'm going to leave you with some video's. I hope you will enjoy!