Monday, July 30, 2007

Voices and Songs

The other day at Roger's Place there was a brief discussion thread about female vocalists. One of the commenters seemed to feel that voices which aren't earthshaking, merely pleasant voices, are unworthy of listening to or mentioning.

This weekend, on a whim, the Better-Two-Thirds and I went to see Linda Eder and Michael Feinstein performing together in their Two For The Road Tour.

I had never heard of either. Actually, in the case of Ms. Eder, I'd merely fogotten her. I'd seen her in Jekyll & Hyde. Apparently Mr. Feinstein is well known to afficionados of what has become known as The Great American Songbook. He hosted the PBS series which I have never seen but wish I had.

We almost left the show at intermission. I wasn't sure whether the problem was the sound system or the acoustics for the hall but the sound was not right and it was wearing upon my desire to listen. My bride, who has an infinitely more astute ear, said it was the sound system, the portion handling the band, and that it was improving, so we stayed. I'm glad we did. By the time intermission was over they'd fixed whatever the problem was. We enjoyed the remainder of the show enough to outweigh the initial dissatisfaction.

The lady can sing. I'll leave others to decide if her voice is suitably earth-shaking or not. I know I'll be picking up some of her CDs (well, I'll get the iTunes rather than the CDs, but it's all the same).

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