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Josh Groban in the Round
Nov. 9th, 2013 04:57 pmSo last night, I went with my family to see Josh Groban in concert. It was very good and definitely redeemed the All That Echoes album in my mind--it's a good album, don't get me wrong, and certainly better than Illuminations, but there wasn't much that stood out to me personally. I knew I would have to wait for the live version to really get into it--whelming as Illuminations was, there were still a couple of songs that were fantastic, such as "Voce Existe im Mim," which he did perform. Overall, his voice comes out a lot stronger in concert compared to the albums, like "Brave," where he's a little overpowered by the background music, which doesn't have any really stand-out instruments either. Live, it was spectacular.
The opening act was Judith Hill, who was fantastic--I particularly loved "A Beautiful Life," even though she did run a little long. It's a shame that there's no acoustic version of that song on iTunes because it was amazing. She performed "The Prayer" with him and a duet version of "Remember When it Rained," which is one of my all-time favorites.
I think what really helped the All That Echoes songs is the heavy emphasis on violins, which I'm partial to. He had a different violinist this time compared to usual--instead of Lucia Micarelli, it was Christian Habel. He was different, but still very good--during the intermission, he rocked it playing Aerosmith's "Dream On," and that's one that I'll have to rip or something when the CD/DVD of the concert comes out.
The reason why the whole concert tour is called "in the Round" anyway is because of the oval-shaped stage, which gave everyone in the audience a good view of him, since he walked around the stage in order to face everybody.
Two things weren't fantastic about the overall experience, however. The first was the fact that I was totally unprepared for how high we were in the Tampa Bay Times Forum--we could see fine, yeah, but my acrophobia acted up when I got there, and I had to rush to sit down and booked it out once the concert was over. Second, a fight almost broke out during the opening act--a guy near us was apparently threatening some woman behind him, and the usher managed to break it up and get the guy to calm down, and they later moved the people behind him to another seat far away from him--no idea what happened there, but it was intimidating, to say the least.
But other than that, pretty damn good.
The opening act was Judith Hill, who was fantastic--I particularly loved "A Beautiful Life," even though she did run a little long. It's a shame that there's no acoustic version of that song on iTunes because it was amazing. She performed "The Prayer" with him and a duet version of "Remember When it Rained," which is one of my all-time favorites.
I think what really helped the All That Echoes songs is the heavy emphasis on violins, which I'm partial to. He had a different violinist this time compared to usual--instead of Lucia Micarelli, it was Christian Habel. He was different, but still very good--during the intermission, he rocked it playing Aerosmith's "Dream On," and that's one that I'll have to rip or something when the CD/DVD of the concert comes out.
The reason why the whole concert tour is called "in the Round" anyway is because of the oval-shaped stage, which gave everyone in the audience a good view of him, since he walked around the stage in order to face everybody.
Two things weren't fantastic about the overall experience, however. The first was the fact that I was totally unprepared for how high we were in the Tampa Bay Times Forum--we could see fine, yeah, but my acrophobia acted up when I got there, and I had to rush to sit down and booked it out once the concert was over. Second, a fight almost broke out during the opening act--a guy near us was apparently threatening some woman behind him, and the usher managed to break it up and get the guy to calm down, and they later moved the people behind him to another seat far away from him--no idea what happened there, but it was intimidating, to say the least.
But other than that, pretty damn good.