The following is a guest post from my very good friend Chris Brandt, Music Business Instructor at Nimbus School of Recording Arts.

It's a beautiful piece that captures the essence and beauty of live music, the transcendental magic that happens in brief moments when watching a brilliant artist get lost in song. This piece was inspired after attending a theatre performance by Adele at The Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver on August 9, 2011.

Live Music
~ Chris Brandt

I am blessed to have known my great-uncle. My grandmother’s brother-in-law. My grandfather’s best friend. I have been told many times that I give the best hugs in the world. I learned this from him – to hug with your whole body. At least in the time I knew him, his emotions were always at the surface; colouring him like freckles and blemishes, and no less visible.

There is no such thing as a perfect concert. But there are perfect moments. Moments where you inhale, as if you can draw more music in with breath. Moments where one tear is wrung out of you as though your chest were a damp towel. Moments where emotions escape from your pores – everything at the surface.

I have been told that armies will break forced-march as they cross a bridge for fear that the precision of their steps in unison is enough to damage it. I’ve experienced concert moments where everyone in the room synchronizes one heart beat. And then the bridge collapses.

These moments may be only four words… in the second chorus… of the 11th song. The opening notes of “Message In A Bottle” played live, 24 years after standing outside the arena and saying “I will see them next year”. Al Green tossing out a rose during “Let’s Stay Together”, and catching it (I still have it). Consuming Stevie Ray Vaughn’s performance of “Lenny”, one month before he died. The collective pause as Elvis Costello stands at the front of the stage with the microphone behind him and, unaccompanied, fills the room. Understanding that the emotion that Eddie Van Halen can elicit in an intricate guitar solo, BB King can accomplish in one note.

They allow you to believe that maybe Nick Drake really did die of a broken heart, and that Elliott Smith may have actually found the strength to thrust the knife into his own.

Entire concerts are not needed to achieve this, only moments. Relationships are built on the first instance of finishing each other’s sentence. Sporting careers are defined by one goal scored…or allowed. Pope’s “The Rape Of The Lock” is an epic poem in five cantos, but I unfailingly remember only 2 lines: “Know, then, unnumbered Spirits round thee fly, The light Militia of the lower Sky”.

Adele’s stage was sparse. No icing. No accoutrements offered at so many other shows, where they condescend to you as if you had the entertainment demands of a dog, and they were releasing squirrels.

There would be impressions made by her shoes on the small rug at center stage, I’m certain of it, as she never moved from one spot. The only dance moves came from the guitarist’s left hand, and the piano player’s right.

I don’t know how many artists I have seen. In one year alone I saw 189 – yes, I counted. Tonight was everything I love about live music, gifted to me in one show.

There are people who are fed by sunsets, or wine, or the small of someone’s back. Others feed through their ears. This show articulated why I maintained a university radio show for almost 3 times the length of time I spent actually enrolled at university; why I play Ray Lamontagne and Ryan Adams in my yoga classes; and why listening to “What’s Going On” on vinyl makes the world fall away.

Unadorned. Brief. Perfect.

~ Chris Brandt
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This article appears as originally published on Travel Diaries here:
http://traveldiaries.ca/music/live-music/

Tags: Chris Brandt | Guest Contributor | Live Music