Chris Botti, Tarrytown Music Hall, Dec. 13, 2012

I went to see a concert by Chris Botti, Dec. 13, 2012.

Why did I go to this concert?  I went to this concert, because I am a Grobanite and I have seen Chris perform with Josh.  I have also seen Chris perform with Lucia Micarelli, who has also performed with Josh, and who I am just as obsessed with as with Josh.

This concert was at the Tarrytown Music Hall, in Tarrytown NY.  The concert was originally scheduled for November 8, but it was rescheduled, because Chris was performing with Barbra Streisand.  She trumped Tarrytown.  That's understandable, I guess.

I'm not quite sure what I expected from the concert.  I guess had this idea of Chris as this guy with this incredibly smooth, mild, soft tone.  I actually do have his DVD from his Boston performance, but I never listened to the whole thing, which was mostly because I really wasn't that into some of the pieces, but I figured I'd go hear him anyway.

I think I thought of him as jazz, and some of the pieces were jazz, but I wouldn't say they all were.  I would say there was something of a mix of genres, with some sounding more like rock jamming.  At least two of the pieces were classical -- a Chopin piece and Nessun Dorma -- though perhaps they were jazz versions of classical, because they really didn't sound classical.

Chris's band was all male.  There were 2 female soloists, a violinist and a vocalist, and a guest male vocalist, who had been flown in from Germany just for this concert, which I found fairly amazing.  I find that all male pattern disturbing.  I see it in a lot of bands.

I learned that Chris has been on tour for 9 years, 300 days per year.  I found that statistic fairly amazing, as well.

Some of the concert was intolerably loud for these sensitive ears of mine.  At first I thought they had overamplified for such a small hall, but after a while I decided they really did want to be loud -- so I just sat there with my ears covered some of the time.  I did not put in my ear plugs, because sometimes the music was soft.

Some people seem to prefer the way musicians sound live.  Personally, I find these louder musicians generally sound best to me on my home system, because I can turn them down.

The amplification gave a sort of smoky echoey sound.  I think this worked for the louder parts, though it distorted some of the softer parts.  The vocalists were hard to hear over the music.  Chris's softer, mellower parts did not come through as well under this sound system as they seemed to on the recordings I have heard.

His louder parts were of the sort that don't make much sense to me musically: a lot of loud, high hooting notes.  The other audience members seemed really excited, so I suppose there must be a lot of folks who like that stuff, but, alas, it's not my thing.

Chris introduced all his musicians.  Unfortunately, he said many of the names while the music was going on and people were clapping, so I could not hear a lot of them.  That made me particularly sad with respect to the drummer, who he praised very highly and who did play exceptionally well -- but I don't know his name.

We also did not get a written program, so I could not refer to that either.  A written program would have helped me remember the names of the pieces and the musicians.  I suppose I'm supposed to recognize all of them.  I did recognize some, but certainly not all.

I did hear the name of the violinist.  She was Carolyn Campbell.  She was very beautiful, in a sexy evening gown, and seemed very young.  Like Lucia, she performed barefoot.  That surprised me.  I thought that was peculiar to Lucia, but apparently not.  

I am obsessed with Lucia, because she was the first violinist who I ever enjoyed listening to.  She has a unique sound on the violin, which I enjoy.

I was particularly eager to hear Carolyn, who is now filling Lucia's shoes, or lack of shoes, as the case may be.  

I was favorably impressed with Carolyn.  She did have a nice sound -- definitely preferable to the classical violinists I have heard, and who I generally don't like --  but she was not Lucia.  This is not to say she was worse than Lucia, but she was just not Lucia.  Carolyn did an impressive, dramatic solo, which was something of the genre of the Kashmir solo that Lucia did on Josh's Awake DVD -- and it was a good one -- but, still, it was not Lucia.  

I don't know what it is about Lucia's playing that effects me so, but no one else gets to me that way.  Of course, I don't know what I would have thought even of her with that sort of misty, sounding echoey amplification that wasn't entirely balanced.  Maybe I wouldn't have liked her as much there, either.

Chris did a cute thing with Nessun Dorma at the end.  

He did a walk around in the orchestra during part of the concert.  That was nice -- not as loud as some of the other pieces, and some of that smooth, mellow sound that I like so much came through.

Apparently, while he was out there, he located a school girl who plays the drums.  He brought her up for the finale of Nessun Dorma and let her play on stage.  They supervised her to make sure she held off until the end, where they actually had three people playing to increase the noise.  She did a good job, from what I could tell, though there was so much noise at that point it was hard to distinguish much of anything, including the singer.  Still it was fun having her up there.

Am I going to another Chris Botti concert?  I don't think so.  I sort of wasn't expecting to enjoy this, because I don't really like jazz.  I guess, since my expectations were low, I probably enjoyed it more than I expected.  I do wish that musicians would realize that in an older, small concert hall, amplification is not really necessary and may detract from the sound quality -- especially for a trumpet.  I fail to see why a trumpet needs amplification in such a hall.

Curiously, Chris seemed to have some kind of flashlight at the end of this trumpet for when he walked out in the audience.  That was interesting.

Oh, also, there was no intermission.  Fortunately, they let us go to the bathroom during the concert, but the restroom door was propped open, which wasn't so good for the people sitting near there.

Young musicians don't seem to realize that older people can't necessarily wait 2 hours to go to the bathroom.  Of course, I did stupidly drink tea before the concert.  Not a good idea.

When I go to Lincoln Center, where they don't let you back in if you go to the bathroom, I had better remember not to drink much.  And they wonder why older people get dehydrated.  The idea of handicap accessibility is not well extended to people with the disability of weak bladder, but this concert wasn't so bad in that respect.

Oh, well, I can chalk all this up to an educational experience, I guess.