Mon, 15 Jan 2007

Too hot to Handel

We went to see a performance of Too hot too Handel [1], a Gospel/Blues/Jazz/Rock rendition of the Messiah, at the Auditorium Theater on Saturday.

Two choirs comprising 120 singers, a full jazz (big) band with drums, electric and acoustic bass, electric organ, piano and about twenty brass instruments as well as an equal number of strings in the symphonic section, plus vocalists Rob Dixon (tenor), Victor Trent Cook (counter tenor) and Alfreda Burke (soprena) made for a very full sound in this beautiful theater.

For apparent scheduling problems, the performance was moved from the Christmas season (in which Haendel's original Messiah is rather popular) to the Martin Luther King birthday weekend, which is appropriate enough. Even though quite a few seats were empty, the musicians had little problem to get the audience onto their feat with a fine performance, and a rousing finale. Recommended.

[1] Not sure where the Umlaut went missing there. Oh well.

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