Concerts

Concert Review – JEAN MICHEL JARRE

Mark Jenkins at London Wembley Arena

      

Jean Michel Jarre at London Wembley Arena, pic by Mark Jenkins

In touring mode, Jean Michel Jarre (the hyphen having been dropped a couple of years back) presents a cut-down version of his spectacular outdoor concerts which have lit up the skylines of London, Houston, Shanghai, Lyon, and venues such as the Egyptian pyramids and the Sahara desert.

Without a specific album to promote at the moment – last year’s events having been based around live performances of the classic “Oxygene” – the current concerts comprise a “greatest hits” show based mainly on the early albums Oxygene, Equinoxe and Rendezvous. No sign then of the techno beats which have characterised some of his more recent albums, nor of the sampled sounds which started to appear on 1980’s albums such as “Magnetic Fields”. This makes the soundscape more or less relentlessly analog, and the equipment setup in fact has changed very little from the all-analog lineup used for the “Oxygene” concerts.

Jarre as usual was accompanied by Francis Rimbert and Dominique Perrier on keyboards, while Claude Samarre was musical director and played electronic percussion. Each player was backed by a wall of modular synthesizers – the Big Moog system, the ARP 2500, and in Jarre’s case an ARP2600 and EMS VCS3 synths – while elsewhere the lineup was the familiar one of Moogs, ARP Odysseys, EMS VCS3’s, and several examples of the Eminent organ which creates most of Jarre’s rich string sounds.

More innovation was in evidence in the area of lighting – a new combination of lasers and LED lamps which doubled as lights and small graphic image projectors created a wash of colour which helped immerse the audience in the music, and this was effectively combined with several passages featuring Jarre on solo instruments – the Theremin, the Roland AX remote keyboard, the Laser Harp, the Moog Liberation strap-on keyboard and a traditional French piano accordion.

Three encores including a repeat of Jarre’s early single from “Oxygene” completed the show, and the concert series will continue throughout 2009 into 2010. This is a short and sharp set – just two hours long – and convincingly showcases Jarre’s continuing mastery of the instrumental electronic music genre.

http://aerojarre.blogspot.com/ 

Concert Review – RICK WAKEMAN

Mark Jenkins at Hampton Court Palace, London

Rick Wakeman at Hampton Court Palace - pics by Mark Jenkins

The 500th anniversary year of Henry 8th’s accession to the throne  is being celebrated with a whole series of TV programmes, exhibitions and special events, none more spectacular than this pair of concerts at Henry’s home Hampton Court Palace, half an hour from central London.

For the occasion Rick Wakeman was performing in its entirety his 1973 album “The Six Wives of Henry 8th” and had added three new pieces, including “Defender of the Faith” dedicated to Henry himself, and “Tudor Rock” which presented a medley of styles used on the album.

The English Rock Ensemble (including Rick’s son Adam on second keyboards), the English Chamber Choir and the Orchestra Europa filled a massive stage constructed in front of the palace building (in fact this facade is the rear, the main gardens being at the front), and narrator Brian Blessed supplied the history of each of the wives in turn.

Wakeman’s entrance in full Tudor costume accompanied by all six wives was greeted with enormous enthusiasm, but there was much more to come as each section of the concert introduced a new spectacle – a massive church organ rolled onto the stage for one piece, a grand piano on a high podium appearing for another, a remote keyboard strapped around Wakeman for a closing musical “battle” with his son. Wakeman had retained a pair of original MiniMoogs as used on the album, alongside top of the line keyboards from Korg and Roland, and two digital Memotron keyboards which replaced the bulky Mellotrons used on the album.

The weather on the first night thankfully remained clear and a near capacity audience of 5,000 was treated to a mighty spectacle in light and sound. A DVD release for the full concert is imminent and the Royal Palaces (HRP) website has links through to the organisers Classic Media Group, to a YouTube clip explaining the concept behind the show, and to Rick’s own website.

Now all we need is “Journey to the Centre of the Earth” performed at the Geological Museum… 

http://www.hrp.org.uk

http://www.rwcc.com

http://www.classic-media-group.com

Many thanks to HRP and to Ben Williams at Classic Media Group for event invites.

Concert Review – TANGERINE DREAM

Mark Jenkins at The Forum, Kentish Town

Perhaps the only well known keyboard group in the world, Tangerine Dream celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2008, and a special concert at London’s The Forum in Kentish Town promised to mix new material with classic tracks from a back catalogue spanning a massive 90 or so albums.

The only constant factor in the group is founder member Edgar Froese, who played electric guitar in early Berlin-based psychedelic rock groups, for among others Salvador Dali at his villa in Spain. Tangerine Dream always seems Dali-influenced, seizing on the early electronic keyboards, like the EMS VCS3 for strange sounds, Moog Modular for repeated sequencer patterns, and Mellotron for huge string and choir chords, to spin long, strangely textured compositions with titles like “Phaedra” and “Rubycon” taken from the classics.

As technology developed, Tangerine Dream leapt on each new opportunity, embracing polyphonic synthesizers, then MIDI, sound sampling and more recently software synthesizer techniques. Creating many Hollywood TV and film soundtracks, the band was at its height in the 1970’s and early 1980’s when Michael Mann’s movie “Thief” was graced by TD’s rolling sequencer patterns and crashing guitar, but many would argue that the band then passed it peak. As lineup changes became more frequent, much of the original creativity was lost in an increasingly bland succession of weakly melodic tunes, each using little more than what seemed like the General MIDi set of basic instrumental sounds.

So a review of 40 years’ worth of material which covered a vast range of styles and used many different instrument types seemed a daunting task, though The Forum’s packed audience of over 2,000 seemed to welcome the challenge. The curtains rose to reveal dual levels of keyboards and percussion, a brace of green/blue lasers, dual video projection screens either side of the stage, and big 42-inch plasma monitors to display the band’s software synthesizers.

Edgar Froese has chosen Nord Lead 3 and the new Nord Wave keyboards plus a Memotron (which mimics the classic Mellotron sounds) from German manufacturer Manikin plus a Mac laptop, while Thorsten Quaeschning also had a Memotron, Manikin’s flashing-light-equipped sequencer the Schrittmacher, a Prophet rackmount, and Access Virus and Korg RADIAS keyboards.

So what was on the big plasma screens? Well Edgar’s seemed to be running dual instances of the Native Instruments FM7 imitation of the Yamaha DX7, while Thorsten’s packed in half way through the show but seemed to make no difference to what we could hear. And the sounds were certainly powerful – thumping basses  and strong rich string chords under precise harpsichord-like melodies, Iris Camaa crashing away on drums and percussion, while saxophonist Linda Spa also added keyboard parts and guitarist Bernhard Beibl strung what would originally have been Edgar’s screaming guitar parts over the top.

If you didn’t know the tracks, one could seem much like another, and the first half certainly comprised relatively recent music (which means to say, it could go back a decade or more). But some classics did start to come out eventually including parts of the pleasingly melodic “Tangram”, the powerfully rocking “Force Majeure”, and finally the bouncy TV theme “Streethawk” as well as the slow, melodic closing theme from Ridley Scott’s movie “Legend”.

Closing encore was an instrumental version of a Beatles song – the last TD album featured many vocal tracks, but this concert featured not a single one other than a vocoder voice on this piece  – and though the band’s primarily thought of as being instrumental, the lack of a vocalist or of much movement from the majority of the band is always going to be a problem for some listeners and viewers. The lasers once switched on rarely went off and so rather lost their impact, while the computer graphic visuals were not very much linked to the music, but the near capacity audience seemed more than pleased with the overall impact.

When Edgar Froese at the end rose to take the microphone and described London as the band’s “home” – certainly the capital of a country where some of their greatest material was recorded in the early Virgin Records years – there was a genuine surge of affection for this classic band. Long may they endure – maybe not for a further 40 years, but Tangerine Dream certainly has some mileage remaining yet.

www.myspace.com/tangerinedreamofficialsite

 

Concert Review – RETURN TO FOREVER

Mark Jenkins at the Indigo2, London

Chick Corea is one of the all-time greatest popular keyboard players, spanning the jazz, jazz/rock fusion and classical scenes with ease and innovating with bands such as that of Miles Davis, most recently his own Chick Corea Elektric Band, and now with a re-formed Return to Forever.

This central RTF lineup of Corea on keyboards, Lenny White on drums, Stanely Clarke on bass and Al DiMeola on guitar recorded four albums including “Romantic Warrior”, and these were among the first to integrate electronic keyboards into jazz (thereby creating what was essentially a jazz-rock fusion). In the 1970’s Corea played almost every new keyboard available, and was seen on Tony Palmer’s recently repeated “All You Need Is Love” documentary on the history of popular music playing a MiniMoog and a Yamaha YC45D organ. Another favourite was the ARP Odyssey and Corea tended to alternate between this and the MiniMoog, relishing the contrast betwen fatter and thinner but more precise sounds. You can see some great examples from 1970’s concerts on YouTube.

Of course the acoustic piano played its part too, but for practicality this was often replaced by the Fender Rhodes piano and Corea had his instruments extensively modified by companies such as DynoMyPiano. For the new series of Return To Forever concerts – accompanied by a newly remastered compilation CD release – he’s been playing the Rhodes as well as a Moog Voyager, and a Yamaha MOTIF keyboard synth plus several MOTIF modules.

Tracks like “Vulcan Worlds”, in fact composed by bassist Stanley Clarke but featuring plenty of fluid keyboard soloing, took advantage of the excellent sound system in the smaller Indigo2 venue at London’s erstwhile Millennium Dome, a plush bar-like location seating something over 1,000 and on this occasion completely packed. The band took some time to progress beyond this early track and seemingly to gain confidence – but it may all have been part of a plot to build up slowly, since Al DiMeola’s electric guitar playing was loud, brash and frenetic from the very start.

Stanley Clarke on bass of course has to be seen to be believed – much of the time he’s playing chords as a rhythm guitarist would rather than just single bass notes, so the harmonic interaction between bass and keyboards can become extremely complex. The second half solos of course gave him a chance to show off his extended bass techniques, whereas Corea’s keyboard solo partly compromised a rather ho-hum traipse through some of the percussion sounds in the MOTIF. Excitement built again though as Corea stood to rejoin the band on a Yamaha KX5 portable remote keyboard, wandering around the stage and interacting a little more with poor old drummer Lenny White – who, stuck behind a perspex sound partition stage left, tended to seem a little isolated from the rest of the band.

The new RTF album “The Anthology” presents almost all of the tracks performed, provides a great introduction to the band (omitting the earlier years in a more Latin-influenced lineup) and is a compulsory purchase for any students of electric keyboard music.

http://www.return2forever.com

http://www.chickcorea.com