Held on Tuesday 7th Feb Christchurch Town Hall
What a brilliant concert.The town hall has very good acoustics and so the sound was fantastic where I was sitting.When Amici were performing there also were 4 spotlights shining a pretty blue rotating pattern onto the ceiling which looked great.
Ben Morrison opened the show. He is a 19 yr old violinist who went to the same school at the same time as Hayley.
I first saw him at Hayleys first concert in Christchurch. He also has played at Yulias concerts.
His performance was breathtaking especially when he did the high notes.
He performed some songs from his CD Debut as well as some others.
The songs were Origami crapelli, Gra con me, Spanish dance, Song from a secret garden, Meditation, and a couple of Gershwin songs from Porgy and Bess - Bess you are my woman now and It ain't necessarily so.
The Amici came on to a packed house.
They did most of the same songs as in Queenstown but these are the songs they did differently:-
Aranjuez mas pensee
Funiculi funicula (which the audience clapped to)
Nella Fantasia
and for the encore they did Nesun dorma.
They got another standing ovation at the finish.
And for once I agree with a Chch reviewer(as seen below)
Here are some excerpts from the Chch Press
New priorities as tenor leaves Amici Amici fans packed the Christchurch Town Hall last night to hear one of the group's last performances with Kiwi tenor and dedicated dad Geoff Sewell.
Hawkes Bay-born Sewell,31, the co-founder of the popera band, is doing a farewell tour of New Zealand and Australia before quitting to look after his two-year-old daughter, Sienna, who was diagnosed in December as having autism.
She needs intensive care from Sewell and his wife, Simone Lanham, to overcome the social and communication barriers posed by the condition.
"It is with sadness that I've made the difficult decision to leave Amici so I can spend more time at home," he said. Brazilian baritone Bruno Santino will replace Sewell and will appear in asymbolic handover on the last night of the Australian tour next month.
He will join English singers David Habbin (tenor) and Appleby (soprano) and Tsakane Valentine, a South Africa-born soprano.
The Amici Forever tour goes to Wellington tonight, then Napier and Auckland before the Australian tour.
New Zealand touches in this tour include the song Hine e hine, written in 1905 by Princess Te Rangi Pai and covered by Kiri Te Kanawa.
Next is the review in the Chch Press:-
Wow, but oh those backing tracks Amici Forever. Christchurch Town Hall, February 7. Reviewed by Patrick Sheperd.
Whatever else may be said about this vocal foursome, they certainly have that wow factor,. Impeccably attired, stunningly good-looking young singers with voices to match, taking a capacity crowd through a carefully packaged line-up of popera standards is proving a definite recipe for commercial success.
Tsakane Valentine, Jo Appleby, David Habbin and Geoff Sewell are all excellent performers in their own right and as a group blend seamlessly together.
Their ensemble works well in the many different permutations the various vocal arrangements offer and one gets the sense that they genuinely enjoy working with one another on stage, which is sad in a way as one of the key members of the band, New Zealander Geoff Sewell, is leaving after this tour. The audience loved every minute and I did too. have one of their albums and I would pretty much put it in the category of the thinking man's easy listening.
The eclectic mix arranged from Nessun Dorma to My Way, Carmen to Unchained Melody, and it gave each member of the group a chance to shine, but the real winner was the overall blend of the voices.
However -- and it is a big however -- I simply couldn't get over the use of backing tracks.
The 12 members of the CS string section on stage were there to stop it being, well, a karaoke.
What else can it be when a group of singers sing to a backing track? I'm sure even programmed synthesizers and a carefully chosen group of live musicians could have backed the singers more than amply.
It would have also afforded a greater degree of elasticity in some of the slower numbers.
Violinist Ben Morrison was an impressive opener, with polished numbers from Gershwin to the beautifully controlled Meditation, in front of his home crowd. His technique is quite brilliant, making light of rapid-fire left hand pizzicato and double-stopped trills among many other feats.
