Elizabeth Jamieson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elizalavelle) wrote2007-05-13 09:14 am
elizalavelle) wrote2007-05-13 09:14 am
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Two Slean shows in a row! Much fun. I'm feeling entirely happy... well I do have more complaints about the service at Harbourfront BUT the shows themselves were an absolute delight!
Oh the first part of Tales of the Baroness (the animated film Sarah worked on) premiered this week but for those of you who missed it you can catch it next week:
May 19 A-Channel Victoria at 6 pm local time
May 19 A-Channels Ontario (London, Barrie, Ottawa) at 7:30 pm local time
And now on to the concerts:
I'm going to blur the two nights together into one review as there weren't any huge differences between the two aside from the usual, Friday audience being more enthusiastic and Sarah wearing two fabulous outfits.
Both nights we met up with everyone pretty well, we even ran into more people whom I didn't expect to see (Nicole, Miguel, Evelyn, Jim and I think the name was Michelle...) which is always fun. I love seeing more people :) The second night we had no surprises, oh and I got to meet Viv and Jo's friend Rebecca, whom I was instructed not to scare. It turned out she's a huge Slean fan as well... those are pretty hard to scare ;)
To begin with Harbourfront now has a new policy about being late. I get it, but this is also the first theatre (including every theatre I've been to on Broadway) in which I've encountered this. If you're late you do not get to go to your seat until after intermission. They just send you up to the balcony... also the first night my friends who were late by like 1 song, weren't even allowed into the lobby until 2 songs in and then not allowed to the balcony until after the 3rd song. That's confusing like woah to me. It's like a punishment for daring to be late to their establishment and I'm not so much a fan of that. However I can understand their logic about not disrupting the show... although it is a concert and getting to your seat between songs wouldn't be so terrible... but they can argue it and I'm not going to pick that fight with this venue. They did more later that I can argue.
We had fantastic seats this time around, nothing blocking our view. CBC was recording the entire show so expect to be able to hear it sometime in the future. Andrea and I ended up in the same seats both nights, I think that's the first time where that has happened at this theatre.
On to the music:
Sarah got to pick the setlist, which is why it is so different from the one that was advertised when we bought tickets (Jo I asked for you) the original singer couldn't do the show and so they asked Sarah to sing with them and she wasn't sure about doing all of the standards and so they reorganized the show and she got to choose her own songs :)
Setlist:
Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye: Leonard Cohen (arranged by Gavin Bryars)
Lodestar: Sarah Harmer (arranged by Roberto Occhipinti)
Dandelion Wine: Ron Sexsmith (arranged by Aaron Davis)
To Cry About: Mary-Margaret O’Hara (arranged by Bruce Cassidy)
Stride: Hayden (arranged by Finn Manniche)
Monarch: Feist (arranged by Cameron Wilson)
Trio performance of Old Photographs: Christos Hatzis
intermission
Trio piece: Tango do Burashko: Phil Dwyer
I Don’t Need More: Kathryn Rose (arranged by Phil Dwyer)
Black Flowers: by Lynn Miles (arranged by Kevin Fox)
Eyes are the Flowers: John Southworth (arranged by Michael Occhipinti)
No More Named Johnny: Hawksley Workman (arranged by Shelly Berger)
I’ll Never Tear You Apart: Martin Tielli (arranged by Jon Goldsmith)
Dress Rehearsal Rag: Leonard Cohen (arranged by Jim McGrath)
and as a lovely encore piece -
The Lonely Side of the Moon: Sarah Slean
I really have enjoyed these Art of Time nights. The musical scores are so interesting you can just sit back and close your eyes and float on the notes for a while. The Thursday audience always tends to be quieter than the Friday one, myself included LOL but on Thursdays I've just worked all day and I'm tired and rushed from getting home, showered, ready to go out and then running downtown and hopefully finding something to eat as supper before the show. By the time I'm there I'm already exhausted - clearly I'm getting old LOL.
From these two nights I think my favourites, or at least the ones which jumped out at me most were: Dandelion Wine, Stride, Monarch, Black Flowers, Eyes are the Flowers and No More Named Johnny. ... I realize that's half of the show... and looking at it I could probably add the rest of the songs, I'm terrible at choosing favourites. I think it was just a series of strong performances. Sarah made excellent song choices and the people who arranged the songs did fabulous work at bringing the classical sound into contemporary songs. I hope CBC airs this one soon so everyone can hear it :) It was also really nice to have the encore with Sarah on the piano. I definitely found that I was missing her being at the piano singing her songs. But I did like the aspect of having so many different instruments backing her. Definitely a great sound.
After the show was when my new frustration with Harbourfront began. The first night there were 5 of us waiting to talk with Sarah and so we were waiting while she made the rounds of the room talking with her friends. After about 15 minutes an usher came up to us and said they were closing and we had to leave. I said that we were actually just waiting to talk to Sarah, and he said that we had to leave right then. So feeling like a tool I went and interrupted Sarah from her conversation with some friends to say we were being kicked out and just wanted to say hello before we left. So she chatted with us for a few minutes during which the usher stood at most 2 feet away from me... possibly closer, it felt uncomfortably close, and stared at us and then interrupted telling us to leave. Rude!
So what do I do? Write a letter to Hfront, an email actually, in the hopes that perhaps someone would read it before the show on Friday night.
Friday rolls around, stunning show again, much busier lobby so my thought is that with this many people milling about they won't really be trying to force people out again. After perhaps 20 minutes we were standing near to where Sarah was, I had a copy of Ravens with me to be signed for an old teacher of mine in my hands. We were waiting as Sarah was chatting with someone who I think arranged one of the songs for the show. Ergo I'm not wanting to interrupt that. An usher came up to us and asked me if I wanted my book signed. I said yes but I'd ask Sarah when she was free. The usher then proceeds to go over to her and ask if she'd sign something for me while she was chatting with someone else so that I could leave. UGH! How unimpressed was I?! Sarah was her usual gratious self and made it clear to the usher that she actually knew the group of us who was waiting and at least this guy wandered off for a bit. But still, I do not want to be herded out of a venue like that so quickly. And I really really do not like being put in the position of being the fan who is interrupting Sarah while she's talking with friends and people she works with, you know, the people she actually wants to be speaking with. I'm more than willing to wait my turn.
So yes, once again with this venue the shows were great. Harbourfront's people skills, not so great at all. Honestly this is the only venue EVER where I've had this sort of thing keep happening over and over. I'd say they're just being theatre snobby and not enjoying having concerts there BUT I'm a theatre snob in some ways and I haven't seen employees ever behaving like this in any venue. This definitely does nothing to change my mind of not going to new shows at Hfront. I'll go for Sarah Slean because I will pretty much go to any venue to see her perform. But I'm not willing to put myself though being so agravated by this theatre for many other artists.
Oh the first part of Tales of the Baroness (the animated film Sarah worked on) premiered this week but for those of you who missed it you can catch it next week:
May 19 A-Channel Victoria at 6 pm local time
May 19 A-Channels Ontario (London, Barrie, Ottawa) at 7:30 pm local time
And now on to the concerts:
I'm going to blur the two nights together into one review as there weren't any huge differences between the two aside from the usual, Friday audience being more enthusiastic and Sarah wearing two fabulous outfits.
Both nights we met up with everyone pretty well, we even ran into more people whom I didn't expect to see (Nicole, Miguel, Evelyn, Jim and I think the name was Michelle...) which is always fun. I love seeing more people :) The second night we had no surprises, oh and I got to meet Viv and Jo's friend Rebecca, whom I was instructed not to scare. It turned out she's a huge Slean fan as well... those are pretty hard to scare ;)
To begin with Harbourfront now has a new policy about being late. I get it, but this is also the first theatre (including every theatre I've been to on Broadway) in which I've encountered this. If you're late you do not get to go to your seat until after intermission. They just send you up to the balcony... also the first night my friends who were late by like 1 song, weren't even allowed into the lobby until 2 songs in and then not allowed to the balcony until after the 3rd song. That's confusing like woah to me. It's like a punishment for daring to be late to their establishment and I'm not so much a fan of that. However I can understand their logic about not disrupting the show... although it is a concert and getting to your seat between songs wouldn't be so terrible... but they can argue it and I'm not going to pick that fight with this venue. They did more later that I can argue.
We had fantastic seats this time around, nothing blocking our view. CBC was recording the entire show so expect to be able to hear it sometime in the future. Andrea and I ended up in the same seats both nights, I think that's the first time where that has happened at this theatre.
On to the music:
Sarah got to pick the setlist, which is why it is so different from the one that was advertised when we bought tickets (Jo I asked for you) the original singer couldn't do the show and so they asked Sarah to sing with them and she wasn't sure about doing all of the standards and so they reorganized the show and she got to choose her own songs :)
Setlist:
Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye: Leonard Cohen (arranged by Gavin Bryars)
Lodestar: Sarah Harmer (arranged by Roberto Occhipinti)
Dandelion Wine: Ron Sexsmith (arranged by Aaron Davis)
To Cry About: Mary-Margaret O’Hara (arranged by Bruce Cassidy)
Stride: Hayden (arranged by Finn Manniche)
Monarch: Feist (arranged by Cameron Wilson)
Trio performance of Old Photographs: Christos Hatzis
intermission
Trio piece: Tango do Burashko: Phil Dwyer
I Don’t Need More: Kathryn Rose (arranged by Phil Dwyer)
Black Flowers: by Lynn Miles (arranged by Kevin Fox)
Eyes are the Flowers: John Southworth (arranged by Michael Occhipinti)
No More Named Johnny: Hawksley Workman (arranged by Shelly Berger)
I’ll Never Tear You Apart: Martin Tielli (arranged by Jon Goldsmith)
Dress Rehearsal Rag: Leonard Cohen (arranged by Jim McGrath)
and as a lovely encore piece -
The Lonely Side of the Moon: Sarah Slean
I really have enjoyed these Art of Time nights. The musical scores are so interesting you can just sit back and close your eyes and float on the notes for a while. The Thursday audience always tends to be quieter than the Friday one, myself included LOL but on Thursdays I've just worked all day and I'm tired and rushed from getting home, showered, ready to go out and then running downtown and hopefully finding something to eat as supper before the show. By the time I'm there I'm already exhausted - clearly I'm getting old LOL.
From these two nights I think my favourites, or at least the ones which jumped out at me most were: Dandelion Wine, Stride, Monarch, Black Flowers, Eyes are the Flowers and No More Named Johnny. ... I realize that's half of the show... and looking at it I could probably add the rest of the songs, I'm terrible at choosing favourites. I think it was just a series of strong performances. Sarah made excellent song choices and the people who arranged the songs did fabulous work at bringing the classical sound into contemporary songs. I hope CBC airs this one soon so everyone can hear it :) It was also really nice to have the encore with Sarah on the piano. I definitely found that I was missing her being at the piano singing her songs. But I did like the aspect of having so many different instruments backing her. Definitely a great sound.
After the show was when my new frustration with Harbourfront began. The first night there were 5 of us waiting to talk with Sarah and so we were waiting while she made the rounds of the room talking with her friends. After about 15 minutes an usher came up to us and said they were closing and we had to leave. I said that we were actually just waiting to talk to Sarah, and he said that we had to leave right then. So feeling like a tool I went and interrupted Sarah from her conversation with some friends to say we were being kicked out and just wanted to say hello before we left. So she chatted with us for a few minutes during which the usher stood at most 2 feet away from me... possibly closer, it felt uncomfortably close, and stared at us and then interrupted telling us to leave. Rude!
So what do I do? Write a letter to Hfront, an email actually, in the hopes that perhaps someone would read it before the show on Friday night.
Friday rolls around, stunning show again, much busier lobby so my thought is that with this many people milling about they won't really be trying to force people out again. After perhaps 20 minutes we were standing near to where Sarah was, I had a copy of Ravens with me to be signed for an old teacher of mine in my hands. We were waiting as Sarah was chatting with someone who I think arranged one of the songs for the show. Ergo I'm not wanting to interrupt that. An usher came up to us and asked me if I wanted my book signed. I said yes but I'd ask Sarah when she was free. The usher then proceeds to go over to her and ask if she'd sign something for me while she was chatting with someone else so that I could leave. UGH! How unimpressed was I?! Sarah was her usual gratious self and made it clear to the usher that she actually knew the group of us who was waiting and at least this guy wandered off for a bit. But still, I do not want to be herded out of a venue like that so quickly. And I really really do not like being put in the position of being the fan who is interrupting Sarah while she's talking with friends and people she works with, you know, the people she actually wants to be speaking with. I'm more than willing to wait my turn.
So yes, once again with this venue the shows were great. Harbourfront's people skills, not so great at all. Honestly this is the only venue EVER where I've had this sort of thing keep happening over and over. I'd say they're just being theatre snobby and not enjoying having concerts there BUT I'm a theatre snob in some ways and I haven't seen employees ever behaving like this in any venue. This definitely does nothing to change my mind of not going to new shows at Hfront. I'll go for Sarah Slean because I will pretty much go to any venue to see her perform. But I'm not willing to put myself though being so agravated by this theatre for many other artists.