Renaissance

October 11, 2015
Rams Head On Stage
Annapolis, MD
USA

Lostbrook 2.0 Volume 113

Source: Church Audio CAFS>CA-9200>Sony M10(24/48)
Location: 20' from stage-left suspended stack

Transfer: Sony M10>Micro SDHC>PC>Sound Forge 10>WAV 16/44.1>
Trader's Little Helper>FLAC(level 8) No EQ.

Taper/Transfer/Notes: Lostbrook
Covers/Review: ethiessen1

Disc 1: (55:39)

01 Intro (1:03)
02 Prologue (8:30)
03 Carpet Of The Sun (5:18)
04 Immortal Beloved (7:31)
05 Grandine Il Vento (9:23)
06 Symphony Of Light (14:14)
07 Sounds Of The Sea > Band Intros (9:40)

Disc 2: (47:18)

08 Mother Russia (11:36)
09 Northern Lights (5:31)
10 A Song For All Seasons (12:35)

Encore:

11 Ashes Are Burning (17:36)

Total: 1:42:57

Annie Haslam: vocals, maraccas, tambourine
Mark Lambert: acoustic guitar, vocals
Rave Tesar: keyboards
Tom Brislin: keyboards, vocals
Leo Traversa: bass. vocals
Frank Pagano: drums, vocals

Lostbrook notes:

I have always considered the Rams Head to be outside my territory. The distance (122 miles) isn't prohibitive on it's own, it's more my aversion to driving large portions of the DC Beltway during peak traffic, which could be anytime. With this show falling on a Sunday, and with the Redskins out of town, I decided to give it a try, especially since ethiessen1 was going to be in town. We met early and even played some guitar together. The show was superb, as described below.

ethiessen1's review:

This was our first trip to Rams Head On Stage in Annapolis, MD.
Renaissance was playing one of their short northeastern US tours
and this was as close as they came to us. That area of Annapolis
consists of older looking mostly brick buildings, connected by
very bumpy, very narrow sidewalks. There was a mixture of well
lit but mostly empty of shoppers art galleries, mixed with several
very well attended bars and restaurants. In fact, the patrons
spilled out onto the streets out of many of them. We saw a couple
of female Naval Academy students, dressed to the nines in their
uniforms, as they made their ways with their more casually
dressed civilian companions to dinner and drinks- a common sight
near the Naval Academy, but not something one would normally see
back home.

Finally, after navigating our way through the maze of uneven
paving bricks and people blocking the narrow walkways, we entered
the severely overcrowded Rams Head, which amazingly had aisles even
narrower than the sidewalks. I don't know what the Annapolis Fire
Marshalls allow, but the only other seats that could have been sold
were in the stalls of the restrooms, and getting around inside
was similar to making one's way down a crowded New York City
sidewalk at rush hour.

Imagine a rectangular space, maybe 120 feet wide by 50 feet deep,
populated with way too many 4 ft x 3 ft tables, surrounded by at
least 4 chairs each. The spaces between the tables were insufficient,
once everyone was seated, for the waitstaff to serve hardly anyone
directly-instead, food and drinks were passed over to their
intended patrons by their neighbors. Now, imagine that somehow,
almost as an after thought, a stage maybe 30 feet wide by 15 feet
deep was somehow shoehorned in against a wall, with a dozen or so
seemingly randomly positioned posts spanning floor to ceiling in
front of it. Hardly a venue that one would think could offer any
decent sound or visibility. In fact, onstage, the guitarist and
bassist danced an interesting pas de deux all night long as they
(successfully) kept from hitting each other with the necks of their
instruments - it was that tight up there.

No matter: we were there to hear that musical eighth wonder of the
world with the five octave voice, Annie Haslam, and we would not be
disappointed. As the house lights suddenly dimmed, the band, sans
Annie, went to their places as the crowd erupted into applause.
Once they were plugged in and set, she came out to an even larger
standing ovation.

The opening song, as usual, was Prologue, with a few differences.
The new to the band bassist, Leo Traversa, played in a very
propulsive style that moved the piece along with a different energy
than usual. Annie, as per usual, hit note after note flawlessly,
and although the end of the piece has been rearranged nicely and
thus avoids her having to really reach any way up high notes, the
crowd loved it. The acoustic guitar driven Carpet Of The Sun
followed, her voice dancing playfully through the choruses.

The sound in the venue was excellent, as was the band. In fact,
in a word: superb. The twin keyboards do a wonderful job of filling
out the overall sound palette. In fact, it was so good, one could
imagine the late Michael Dunford and Alison "Nightbird" Steele
looking down from the rafters. Annie commented that her voice had
completely gone from a bacterial infection several days before,
and that she'd had some steroid treatment that might make her a
bit more flighty than usual. Maybe so, but she was in fine voice
for the majority of the evening.

The next three songs were from the band's latest release.
First was Immortal Beloved, and then the title tracks of both
incarnations of the cd(s): Grandine Il Vento and then Symphony
of Light. (Note: Symphony of Light was an expanded version of
the Grandine Il Vento album, created when Renaissance got a
better distribution deal) The latter tune was an especially
good platform for her, with several very striking wordless vocal
melodies. It, of all of the recent material, resembles most the
older Renaissance "sound."

Next came a real treat, Sounds of the Sea, from the band's very
first album Prologue, complete with seagull and ocean wave sounds
in the background. Following close behind was Mother Russia, which
had been requested loudly by several audience members as the
show had progressed. A tribute to Russian writer Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn, lyricist Betty Thatcher based her work on the novel
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, although, as with many
of Renaissance's songs, instead of the poignant lyrics, Annie's
wordless vocalizing of the melodies are the most memorable part
of the piece. One of the concert's several standing ovations
came at its conclusion.

The vocal firepower needed to sing the end of Russia seemed to
cause Annie's voice to be a little off for the only time of the
evening on parts of the next tune, the catchy one-time single
release Northern Lights.

However, things were back to their normal excellence on the set's
closing song, the title track of the Song For All Seasons album.
Another standing O from the crowd followed as the band left the
stage.

The encore, as usual, was the elongated Ashes Are Burning, which
had ex-Yes and Moody Blues keyboard player Patrick Moraz sitting
in at the two previous shows. But he was wasn't present or really
needed on this night. After the verses, the song featured several
instrumental solos from the band as it progressed, increasing in
intensity until the musicians finally stopped completely, leaving
Annie's voice alone to sing the last verse: "Imagine the burning
embers..." Gradually, as she sang it, the band joined back in,
rhymically building almost march-like to a powerful climax, with
her voice dancing on top of them with more of those glorious
wordless melodies, in a way, completing a circular cycle of the
night's music, harkening back to her performance of Prologue one
hundred minutes before. One hundred minutes that seemed like a
much shorter period of time and a time period we in the audience
hoped would never end.


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