respect writer

Katlin Smart

M174 12/2/09

On November 12, 2009 at 7:30 P.M., I attended a spectacular performance of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, featuring the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, on their “Night Castle” tour at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum. I have attended the coliseum quite frequently throughout my life since it is very close to my hometown. I have seen many concerts, hockey games, football games, sales, and many more events in the venue. It doesn’t seem like too long ago they raised the roof on the coliseum to make larger to accommodate more, much needed, seating. I really enjoy how it is laid out; it gives the performers freedom when it comes to designing and setting up their stage. I have seen a lot of different set-ups for stages and they are all very neat looking. The seating was set up like any other big, coliseum-like venue that I had ever been it. The seats were somewhat comfortable, but just like at a movie theater, when you have to get up to use the rest room or grab a snack the whole room must stand up to let you out. Thank goodness we didn’t have any frequent goers in our row because we were on the end.

Everyone was dressed so differently. My idea of an orchestra was elegant and classy, so my family dressed in nicer clothing such as: dress pants and shirts, and others were dressed in jeans and hoodies. We felt a little over dressed; however, there were some other families that decided to dress nice too, so we didn’t feel as out of place. The venue was accommodating for persons with physical disabilities, but as far as other disabilities, I am not sure how they would accommodate them.

The coliseum is a very large place, nothing like Lucas Oil, but still pretty big for Indiana. Lots of events are held here, some that I mentioned earlier; from concerts to hockey games to weddings to proms to football games to sales and expos to monster trucks and so much more. The wide-open middle with surrounding seating makes it a great venue for many things, it also has many other larger rooms with no permanent seating so that they can be set up for whatever might come their way.

Plain and simple, every single performer at this concert had the most exceptional musical combined with performance abilities. There were ten or more vocalists, both male and female, a drummer, bass guitarist, two guitarists, a pianist, and a keyboardist. Also, there was a twelve-piece orchestra including: two main violinists, two violinists, a violist, a cello, a bassist, a clarinetist, two trumpeters, an oboist, and a bassoonist. Before attending this concert I had not seen them before and after hearing their music online and on the radio, I was expecting a huge orchestra not twelve members. Even though there were only twelve orchestral members combined with the vocalists and the other members their sound was bold and abundant, sounded much larger than they were. It was one of the most incredible performances I have ever been to. This performance was so different than any other I had ever been to before, it was so enlightening. All of the members were dressed classy, men in tuxes and woman in black dress pants and sleeveless suit jackets or dresses. There were three main male vocalists that would alternate, one woman had a solo and there were a few songs that they all joined and sang together to form one huge, harmonious sound. It was so apparent that the vocalists had huge lung capacities because they sang so powerfully and forcefully for long periods of time.

Their music is enthusiastic and exciting. There were a few songs that were kind of slow going, but all of the up beat and stimulating songs dispersed throughout the entire concert kept things going and interesting. My absolute favorite song of the entire night was “Nutrocker,” it is a spin off of “Nutcracker” by Tchaikovsky. They made it more upbeat by adding more rhythm with an increase use of drums and cymbals and performed it at a much quicker pace than it was originally composed with. The piano is extremely profound in this version of the song, much more prominent and outspoken than before. Adding a lot of guitar into their version gives more of a ‘rock’ feel to it. I like this song so much because it had such a familiarity, but was better because of the more upbeat, rock feel to it. Every once in a while some older songs just need a ‘face lift’ to get people interested in them again, well they nailed this one because it got my attention. I also really enjoyed their performance of “Toccata – Carpimus Noctem.” In my opinion, when the song first starts out it has a “Phantom of the Opera” feel to it. Then it starts into a quick paced ascending and descending chromatic scale pattern on the guitar, which adds to the mysterious feel of the song. This is one of those songs that just really make you want to tap your foot and bob your head. Added into the middle of the song is a rock style jam session on the guitars and drums; there were so many styles and emotions wrapped into this song that I felt like I was on an emotional rollercoaster ride. And my third favorite song of the evening was “Carmina Burana,” originally composed by Carl Orffs. This one incorporated all the vocalists together, which really made the song sound harmonious and rich. Knowing that there were only ten vocalists singing this song that has been performed by choruses composed of a 100+ vocalists in it and it sounded just as full and bountiful is just amazing. When listening to this piece I felt a lot of suspense, suspense kind of overtook the listeners. The musicianship in this performance makes me want to go practice more. I just cannot get over how loud and full of a sound they have for such a small ensemble.

There were a few slow, somewhat boring, spots throughout their performance. An older, black gentleman recited a story in between songs throughout the whole performance. It was difficult to hear him so I did not catch what the whole story was about so his parts bored me. And there were a couple of pieces I didn’t much care for. Their song “Epiphany” was ten minutes long and was a slower song; I felt like they would get us all excited with their other songs and then they would play a slow song like this one and it would seem really boring compared to the others. I understand that they put songs like this one into their set list so they have something a little slower paced to give them a breather, but it was a very unexciting song. The lyrics just did not seem very appealing or catchy to me. Another one that kind of seemed to drag along was “Embers,” it’s a very beautiful little number if you are sitting at home relaxing to music, but when you are at a concert it seems to lack the attention and aw the other songs had. However, the song did leave you wondering, we all kind of expected it to explode into a forceful beat and the vocalists would burst out into song, but they didn’t so it was somewhat disappointing. “Child of the Night” was another one of their songs that let me down. It was slow and the singers sang impressive notes, but the notes were so high pitched. The tone of their voices and the lyrics together made them seem like they were nagging. I am sure if I were a vocalist that I would appreciate this song more, but I just felt irritated by their voices and the lyrics were not all that catchy either. Despite the couple songs that seemed to drag the mood down, their songs were magnificent.

My favorite portion of the concert was the laser show and pyrotechnics that accompanied their show. How they had them matched with the songs was genius. There were lasers set up everywhere around the coliseum. The scaffoldings set up around the stage and above the main part of the arena moved around according to how the show was set up. On the scaffoldings were some of the lasers and a good portion of the pyrotechnics. I am absolutely amazed by all of the technical aspects that went on to make that concert extremely enjoyable. My favorite ‘part’ of the concert was when two of the performers, the lead guitarist and the lead female violinist, ran to the back of the coliseum floor, which was right in front of me because I was sitting in the back left corner on the second section up. Why I liked it so much was because their crew then proceeded to strap them to this lit up platform then was then hoisted into the air by hydraulics (lots of steam/air) and ropes. The two of them jammed out for what seemed like fifteen minutes right in front of us. It was like they wanted to make sure the back of the coliseum got a close up of the performances too, it was incredible. I loved this show, it was so much different than any other concert I had ever been to and I would gladly go back and see them any day. I would recommend the Trans-Siberian Orchestra to anyone.