Saturday 25 November 2017

Van Morrison Concert hall 2017



The packed concert hall thrilled to be on his Glory train -
as he took us all on a slow and so rhythmic  jazz train over high ridge mountains, peaceful valleys, and fun soul highways….

He began with one of his signature tunes
'It’s a wonderful day for a ‘Moondance …..'
He sang his songs of optimism, and of blues notes with his power soul voice

Morrison at 71, is as busy as ever and he performed tracks from his two new 2017 albums ‘Roll with the Punches’ and 'Versatile'. Today Morrison sang songs of his favourite artists on his Versatile album - such as Cole Porter, Chet Baker, Frank Sinatra, Righteous Brothers, and Nat King Cole - as well as his own compositions and several of his favourite hit songs.

Concert *SONGS – ‘I Can Tell’, ‘Here Comes the Night’, ‘Higher Ground’, ‘Days Like This’, ‘Magic Time’, ‘Sometimes We Cry’, ‘Ease My Troubles That’s What you do’, ‘Carrying the Torch’, ‘Don’t Know What it is’, ‘Wild Night is Calling’, ‘Real Love to You’,

He sang ‘One More for the Road’ - with piano cascades, and his smooth voice and lurching on loves highways and along with the golden notes of trumpet and sax. He travelled on to a softer gospel voice and to more contemporary tunes and back again, with upbeat riffs and beats and rhythms and with spiritual hopes.

Relieved from flip flop flying, zoom, flip flop fly, Don’t get behind,
In the midnight hour, and with our musical Holy Guardian angel,
Mood music, with you my love, when he surprised us all, after walking off the stage, with a rendition of his biggest ever hit, ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ for a very welcome encore!

Morrison is the pivotal star with his occasional hand signals to the band.
He sings of distant vibes, and of hurried tones. Fill my heart.
Morrison is one of our top songwriters.

*Van was relaxed and in good voice and form!
Shimmy dancing from the King of Celtic soul.  
Top marks also to his quality band!  


“Recording songs like these - especially the standards - gave me the chance to stretch out vocally and get back to the music that originally inspired me to sing - jazz!”  Van Morrison on Versatile

On his 2017 album Roll With the Punches, he has recorded R & B classics that informed his music (his father had a large collection of these records when he grew up in Belfast city) – Bo Diddley, Mose Allison, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Lightnin Hopkins, which he performs with his highly individual, raw and personal interpretations.
 “From a very early age, I connected with the blues. The thing about the blues is you don't dissect it – you just do it. I've never over-analysed what I do; I just do it. Music has to be about just doing it and that's the way the blues works – it's an attitude. I was lucky to have met people who were the real thing – people like John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Witherspoon, Bo Diddley, Little Walter & Mose Allison. I got to hang out with them and absorb what they did. They were people with no ego whatsoever and they helped me learn a lot.”  Van Morrison, Roll With The Punches
Van continues: “The songs on Roll With The Punches - whether I’ve written them or not - they’re performance oriented. Each song is like a story and I’m performing that story. That’s been forgotten over years because people over-analyse things. I was a performer before I started writing songs and I’ve always felt like that’s what I do.

Roll With The Punches was produced by Van Morrison and recorded with an incredible team of studio collaborators including Chris Farlowe, Georgie Fame, Jeff Beck, Paul Jones and Jason Rebello.

His Astral Weeks album  is one of the classic albums of all time, all tracks written by Van Morrison – Beside you/ Sweet Thing/ Cyprus Avenue/ The Way Young lovers do / Madame George/ Ballerina / Slim Slow Slider /