Posts Tagged ‘show’

Frank Vignola @ Jazz Alley

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

Went and saw Frank and friends at the Jazz Alley last night. He brought rhythm guitar and violin, a sparse setup on stage of three little sound cubes, only the violinist having a pedal to fiddle with. They started out fast and just kept getting faster. He is truly amazing when he gets going. It was a very funny and energetic show, with covers of Led Zepp, ballet, and opera, alongside the expected Django renditions. Every once in a while, they’d thrown in a synchronized physical flourish, like little faux ballet moves during the ballet cover, and guitar-kicks during the rock numbers. Which is not to say it wasn’t a jazz show, with intimate audience interaction and banter with a recognized regular in that oh-so-knowing tone of who-remembers-when-best-oh-weren’t-those-the-days. He had this funky little tuning device on the end of his guitar, looked almost like a prism, and would change colors between red, green, I think yellow, and blank, as he played.

Foodwise, the spaghetti and meatballs was it’s usual tasty, but for whatever reason, our waitress never gave me a chance to order dessert, oh well. I suppose if I’d really had to have some key-limey-ness, I could have stopped by Whole Foods on the way home, but I was hurrying to get my Chocolati fix on.

Free Lost Fingers

Friday, November 12th, 2010

A big thanks to the Kirkland Performance Center for giving me free tickets, front row center, to a Lost Fingers show tonight. They do an energetic cross of 80′s pop with Django Reinhardt-esque acoustic guitar freakishness. And sometimes straight-up franco jazz swing standards I’d heard before from Frank Vignola. I came down with the start of a headache on the drive over, but once the show started, I was too entertained to notice. Three guys, two guitar and one stand-up bass. One of the guitarists was primary singer, the other was primary talker. The speed at which they all could play was quite impressive. The banter was witty, and the crowd receptive. There was one change of outfits during the intermission, and one encore. I think I heard they were staying around to sign and chat, but I really wanted to make sure I got to Chocolati before it closed, and the headache was making itself known again.

Le Faux at Julia’s on Broadway

Saturday, August 14th, 2010

If you get there, and the seats right by the stage are still open…know that you’ll be craning your neck a lot, and missing whatever they put on the video screen.  But you get a really close view of the action that you can see.

Their Cher was really impressive.  They all were pretty good, really.   When they do the picture-with-the-whole-cast thing at the end of the show, you realize how many people they put on stage through the evening.  The guy who does the hanging cloth acrobatic stuff must work out like crazy, he makes climbing up that stuff look so easy.  They do a lot of comedy talking bits, working with the crowd, including at least one bit that included a plant in the audience, I think.  Or else they just improvised around him really well.

I was entertained.