This past weekend, my wife and I had the absolute pleasure to attend another concert at one of our local venues. This past summer I got an advertisement for a "music of the world" package that the local arts center was offering. I quickly checked all of the dates and then made the purchase. Earlier this month we got to see a Mariachi band, and this past Saturday we got to see Black Violin.
Black Violin is a unique duet made up of two black men who met in orchestra class in high school. Their love for orchestra was second only to their love of hip/hop music, so they decided why not combine the two into something really awesome. Thus Black Violin was born. Since their creation, they have collaborated with many famous artists, toured around the world, and even have a Grammy nominated album.
While my wife was a little hesitant about the Mariachi band that we saw earlier, she had zero reservations about this concert. She loves 90's Hip Hop music and she has always had a fascination with the violin. It's probably the one instrument she always wishes she had learned how to play.
Black Violin being part of the package made it a fairly easy choice for me when I was trying to figure out which show package I wanted to purchase. They had a Broadway one that might have been cool, but this one just spoke to me. Even more so than the orchestra package.
Midland Center for the Arts is a pretty cool venue and while the decor may seem a bit dated, It really is a quite nice place to take in a concert. The seats are fairly widely spaced and the green velour make them rather comfortable to sit in for a extended period of time.
As you can see here, the theater was a bit empty when we first got there, but I assure you it filled in quite a bit once the show started. I didn't chance turning around to take a look, but I could hear the crowd behind me.
While I thought it was going to be solely instrumental, I was surprised that there was actually quite a bit of singing from the fellow on the right in the white shirt. He had a pretty great voice and sang a number of songs that they had created themselves.
Additionally, I assumed that they would just be playing along to prerecorded backing tracks or something like that, but that wasn't the case. They had a full fledged DJ with decks and mad scratching skills along with a drummer and full kit.
It was really awesome.
Let me paint a brief picture for you. Midland, MI where this venue is located is a pretty affluent town (at least in the city), it is largely populated by business people and current or former corporate employees of the Dow Chemical/Dow Corning Corporation. The Center for the Arts itself largely hosts orchestra concerts, operas, documentary screenings you know cultural stuff like that.
Given all of the info above, it is safe to say that a good 70% of the population of the theater on Saturday night was people aged sixty years old and higher. Given that fact, I was quite shocked to see only one couple get up and leave in the middle of the show.
There was even a point at the end of the show where the performers had everyone get up on their feet and "wave their hands in the air". It was pretty comical to see so many old white people dancing to the hip hop beats.
Good for them though!
I am not sure if this will come through, I had to upload it to YouTube, but this is a brief video I recorded at about the middle point of the concert.
The duo has a section of the show where they "freestyle" and just kind of make up their own song as they go. They explained that this section is different each show, so they encouraged everyone to record this and upload it to document this unique moment.
I tried to get a little bit of the solo stuff from each person but watching the video back now, it appears this clip only has the two main members of the duet. The guy on the left with his violin, the guy on the right with his viola, and then the DJ and drummer all did their own solos which were really awesome. The DJ had some pretty awesome skills as well as the drummer.
I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
If you ever get the chance, Black Violin is definitely worth checking out. Their message and goal is to eliminate stereotypes and to get people thinking outside of the box. I think they do both of those things and more. While many people would expect classical music to be boring and "white", this duo shatters that stereotype and they make it absolutely enjoyable.
They also had a brief segment where they talked directly to the younger members of the audience to let them know that something as simple as a violin can actually take them all over the world.
My wife was actually impressed to see the number of children that had been brought to the show by their parents. What a great way to introduce them to different kinds of music at a very early age.
I chalk this one up as a win for sure. We had a delightful evening listening to some really great music.
The next show at this venue isn't until next year in March or April. That one consists of the Peking Acrobats and then our final show is a couple weeks after that and introduces us to the Tartan Terrors!
We are so looking forward to it!
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All pictures taken by myself or @mrsbozz