Music for Museums - Dawn Upshaw and The Knights

Well, not as much Dawn Upshaw as advertised, but a very good night of music all the same.

Brendan had found a small article in the Sunday papers a few weeks back, announcing a performance by Dawn Upshaw at the National Gallery, as part of the "Music for Museums" series. I managed to get tickets without difficulty - it seems that the concert was not widely advertised. So, last night, Susanne and I were treated to an evening of music, with Dawn Upshaw and The Knights (a New York ensemble) in the first hour, and The Knights alone for the 2nd half.

There was no mention in the ads I saw that Dawn Upshaw would only be singing for the first half of the programme (6 songs in total!), and it was only when the conductor introduced the last songs before the interval that it became clear she had done her night's work. She actually sat through the 2nd half - I wonder why really, as there seemed to have been no plan for an encore, even! I think it was a bit disingenuous to have used her name to advertise the evening, but, hey, for €60, including program and free drink at the interval, it was pretty good value all the same.

And I was so happy to see and hear her live anyway - she was exactly like I imagined (well, I have seen her on DVD and YouTube after all): warm, smiling, down to earth and with a gorgeous powerful voice, and an obvious love of music. The acoustics were poor for vocal work - the concert was held in the first big room to the left in the National Gallery - a huge rectangular hall with high ceilings and pillars that seemed to reverberate her high notes to infinity, and not carry the low notes very far. We were lucky to get seats close enough to the stage - her low notes barely carried over the sound of the orchestra, and I felt that she belted out "What More Do I Need" more than she should have, just to make sure that people at the back could hear her voice! That said, I really enjoyed her interpretation of two songs by Osvaldo Golijov, one in Yiddish, and one in Galician.

And The Knights were excellent performers - I enjoyed the Philip Glass piece - Company, and the singing by Christina Courtin - a bit folksy, but she had a lovely voice, and the orchestra accompaniment was excellent. I'm not sure about the guy on the steel guitar - maybe the microphone wasn't strong enough - I felt the sound coming out of the guitar wasn't in proportion to his facial expressions!