This concert was pre-recorded and provided via YouTube. The concert featured music by Black composers, and the quartet felt that their music was not as established as it should be – “not part of the canon”. And they felt it should be, particularly the second piece. The first piece involved five gospel songs. Each was first played conventionally, then there were variations and meanderings along the theme.
A live Zoom discussion with the quartet members was provided before the concert where they talked about the composers and their development of this program. The first and third pieces were recorded at one of the member’s apartments.
It is hard to watch a video of a string quartet – it just isn’t the same as being there.
It wasn’t clear how this was going to work – but it turns out to be a collection of a cappella student submissions that they had prepared themselves. These were a bit hard to watch, but fortunately there were some clips from earlier Idol shows to liven things up. Clearly the students are talented, but they need that backing band….
Another Dartmouth Idol, and this year with reserved seats! We had heard from those who went to the Semi-Finals that there was a good crop of singers, so we were looking forward to the show.
The three judges were all past Idol winners, and the presenter Deby Xiadani had hosted before, and she was ably accompanied by hosts Jake and Jesse. They did a good job, as did the judges.
The singers all sang well. Summer Cody, Molly McQuoid and Caitlin Wanic all did a good job with their solos and duets. Daniel Abate was particularly strong, with a dynamic stage presence, and an audience sing-along for his Stevie Wonder song. Matt Dempsey was a very congenial singer, with a warm bass voice. He was a lot of fun to watch on the stage. The weakest singer seemed to be Soomin Kim, who struggled with the range in her songs.
Hop stage before the show
The strange thing about this show was the decision to tie it to the 50th Anniversary of Sesame Street (which was actually in 2019, not 2020). This seemed completely irrelevant, and added a lot of material to the show that detracted from the students’ performances. There was the choir from Hanover’s Ray School, a video of a choir from Chicago, and lots of Sesame Street songs. Again, why was all this in the show? All great stuff, but they didn’t belong to this show. And what was that Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood thing? But I must admit that I did enjoy seeing the President and the Provost with their corresponding muppets.
In the first half, we heard the solos, and later on duets and trios. The text message voting worked well, with a designated phone number where you texted your top two choices with a number for each contestant. The winner was Caitlin Wanic (my 2nd place choice), Summer Cody in second, and Daniel Abate in third place (my first place choice).
The closing song was a medley with Sesame Street and Earth, Wind and Fire, and would have been a lot better if it had been one or the other, but not a mash-up of both.
This concert opened with a Haydn string quartet, beautiful and more complex than I think of for Haydn. The group members are young, and group founder Geoff Nuttall had big hair.
The modern pieces? Interesting…. But really it was the Haydn that I enjoyed.
When we saw this in the Hop calendar, we were surprised that this was scheduled in May rather than December. I was informed by one of the singers that this was actually an Easter piece, so the idea was to have it shortly after Easter this year.
It is always a beautiful piece, and the group did a fine job. One of the soloists was a contra-tenor, and I still have a hard time with that eerie voice.
This was the last concert by Robert Duff, who has been conducting the Handel Society for about 15 years.
