Introduction
As compare to other forms of art, music is the most popular across the globe. The main elements of a musical composition are the form, rhythm, harmony, and melody. Besides, music is about balancing the dynamics and tempo to create a sonic resonance composition that can appeal to a specific audience. Thus, this reflective treatise reviews the concert which occurred on March 5, 2016 from 8.00 pm at the Catalina Jazz Club. The performers in the concert were Michael Gulezian, Benjamin Verdery, and Billy Dean as a special guest. The paper will dwell on scope of their performance, songs that were played, strengths and weaknesses of the performance.
The Jazz Concert
The concert was held on 5th March 2016 at the Catalina Jazz Club. The concert lasted for two hours from 8.00 pm to 10.00 pm. This being my first attendance to such a big concert, the spectacular recitals by the solo guitarists such as Michael Gulezian, Benjamin Verdery, and Billy Dean really captured my attention just like it did to the jovial audience. The concert hall was packed by audience dressed in their best evening attire. Majority of the audience appeared youthful. The performance stage background was illuminated with a mixture of bright colors and decorations. The background illumination systematically and frequently changed to different themes as each solo guitarist was on the stage. The audience and performers were generally excited and you could see a smile in nearly every face. Gulezian was the first to perform five compositions followed by Verdery who also did five compositions. The special guest, Billy Dean, closed the concerts by doing six compositions.
The compositions I liked best were presented by Michael Gulezian. The compositions consisted of pieces such as Little Meggie, St. Louis Blues, Whale in the Sky, Goodbye, My Friend, and A Nice Place to Visit. The talented Gulezian artistically fused the tempo and dynamics to create a deep jazz music. Gradually, the tempo of the compositions increased and harmonized proficiency and controlled energy as the audience clapped on through the swings between moderate, allegro, and andante. The hypnotic quality of the fast beat perfectly suited the modern performance style of Gulezian’s jazz composition. The musical instrument played in during the performance was a guitar. Song after song, Gulezian demonstrated emerging and entertaining performance styles in balancing the tempo variances.
The performance I liked best were those presented by Billy Dean. The composition ability in the six masterpieces was nearly faultless. Although Billy had instances of misbalance between changing the tempo, that were a little off by fraction of beats, it was understandable given that the context of the performance was live, and such errors could be noticed easily. On the stage, the Billy appeared calm and striking, and I would judge him as successful performer. For Billy’s live performance, he constantly engaged the fans through his solo performance with a guitar, which he appeared to have mastered very well. Despite the fact that Billy did not have a concert facilitator who would psych-up fans, his solo performance moved the audience and they could sing along to compositions.
The composition I liked least was that of Verdery in the piece, Mysterious Barricades. Despite being a celebrated artist, Verdery failed to display prowess in a compound and straight forward tempo. His strategy of adopting repetition in the composition failed to balance the rhythm and melody. Unfortunately, in my opinion, Verdery failed to appeal to his audience since the presentation of this composition could not awake excitement expected of him.
The second performance did not have harmony in the compound and straight forward tempo. Two pieces in the second performance, In Germany Before the War and Mysterious Barricades, were poorly performed during the concert. The solo guitarist, Verdery, was the least outstanding especially in balancing moderato to andante tempo before progressing to a more vigorous allegro tempo. Reflectively, Verdery could not perfectly introduce the andante tempo of the second piece after which he suddenly ushered in slow rhythm to create a disharmonized piece. Verdery could not employ his solo guitarist skills due to the initial inability to balance andante and moderato rhythms.
General reaction
Based on my evaluations, the actual good moments of the concert came towards the end as the performers prepared to leave the fans. Even as I joined others to dance in these last entertaining minutes of the show, the last performer only did six compositions and stopped. Having realized that the crowed was charged, and given that the time for closing the show had not yet elapsed, the special guest would have continued with more compositions to exhaust the charged audience at that moment. Secondly, the concert was rather short, lasting for only two hours. However, this could be as a result of the limited number of hits the performers had, or as a result of the performers’ physical nature and limitations.
Across the concert, I learnt the importance of mixture of form, rhythm, harmony, tempo, and melody to create a perfect piece. Coherently, the level of auditory components have different audience repertoire for sensory connection; commonly referred to as context modality which the solo guitarists showed with little struggle. In the case of this concert, each performer was able to balance different musical tools to keep the audience glued to their acts.