Friday June 16th
Finally, after some misunderstandings, the French instrumental progressive jazz-rockband Priam opened the NEARfest 2000 in the Crocodile Rock Café in Allentown. Unfortunately the Café was much too small (and hot!) for so many people, so only few people have actually seen the musicians. Priam showed an interesting mix of floating symphonic rock and fierce jazz-rock, just as they did on their debut-CD “…3 Distances/Irregular Signs”. On the CD guitar-player Chris Casagrande gets a bit too much attention, on stage keyboard-player Laurent Lacombe-Colomb played himself into the picture with some great solos. This is certainly a band that thrives better on stage than in the studio, especially when they take the space to improvise within the compositions.
Echolyn stands for several years on the list of bands-I-want-to-see, some of us keep. It was good to hear the band reunited again and even made a new record, “Cowboy Poems Free”. The band showed they are back again! New percussion-player provided an extra drive in the compositions, that are driven already. The new compositions also showed that the men have grown after their last record, especially because they don’t put to much ideas in one song anymore. Unfortunately we couldn’t see the band, so they won’t be crossed off the list mentioned before.
Saturday June 17th
In the morning we arrived at the Zoellner Arts Centre of the Lehigh University in Bethlehem, the concert-room where the official NEARfest took place. North Star opened with a surprising concert. Their reunion-CD “Tempest” had a quite poor production, just like their other albums, but on stage the band produced a warm, full sound. It was striking to see how the musicians changed their instruments. Although the group is at the moment a instrumental trio, the original singer/bas-player Joe Newnam was especially for this concert back in the band and his charismatic appearance gave the music an extra dose of accessibility. Hopefully this concert will be released on CD, because it gave a so much better impression of North Star than their studio-albums.
The Italian band D.F.A. also made a strong appearance as could be expected after their two CD’s. After the symphonic rock of North Star the progressive rock with jazz-rock influences of this quartet gave the festival a perfect variety. The band has much in common with Yes and Gentle Giant, especially their staggering technique. This was sparkling, mainly instrumental symphonic jazz-rock, with a lot of space for subtleties.
After this tour de force we could relax with the relative save music from Ilúvatar. This outstanding example of a neo-progband is especially strong because of their sympathetic charisma en melodic compositions. Songs like “The Final Stroke” and “Late Of Conscience” maintain the highpoints within the oeuvre. The new epic “Indian Rain” (from the latest album “A Story Tow Days Wide” also showed that these gentlemen can create with apparently simple material a perfect atmosphere, but a little more show would do no harm.
Anekdoten from Sweden was a very different case. The attraction of the music from this quartet was quite simple in fact, but at the same time very effective. Every song brought the listeners very slowly to a climax of Mellotron-sounds, cello-displays en tearing guitar-riffs, with a perfect rhythm played by bass and drums that lovely sweeps you away. In fact, the concert of Anekdoten was one long trip, in which the songs became more melodic and compelling, judging by the new album “From Within”.
The closer of the day was the reformed Happy The Man. During the festival it turned out many people were there especially for this show. And this was proven with the standing ovation when the band came on stage. The high expectations weren’t disappointed: Happy The Man 2000 turned out to be the highlight of the festival for many people. With David Rosenthal (from Rainbow and Billy Joel) on the seat of Kit Watkins and drummer from the “Crafty Hands”-album Ron Riddle the band surpassed every expectation. Directly from the start with “Service With A Smile” all registers were pulled open and the perfect studio-sound produced by Ken Scott took a perfect shape. Rosenthal is a great showman, who was, together with Terry Bozzio-look- and –sound-alike Riddle, sweeping the more static looking (but absolutely not sounding) primal-members Rick Kennell, Frank Wyatt and Stan Whitaker into a show that only had highpoints. Beside many songs from the three studio-recordings “Happy The Man”, “Crafty Hands” and “3rd: Better Late” the five men also played some new pieces and they sounded so good that waiting for the new CD will take a long, long time for the fans (Better Late, part two?). NEARfest 2000 couldn’t go wrong anymore and some of us made the joke to go home tomorrow.
Sunday June 18th
Day two opened with the Argentine-based Nexus and a threatening, slightly Floydian, instrumental opening promised much. With the second piece this was confirmed, especially when singer Mariela González, who looked like a cross between an exotic princess from Rivendel and Redhair from the Don Lawrence-strip-serial Storm, came on stage. Unfortunately the band leaned, especially in the instrumental songs, too much on ego trippery, in which the screaming guitar-parts from Carlos Lucena and the long-winded keyboard-exercises from Lalo Huber sometimes got out of the hand completely. As far as that is concerned the partly Genesis-like, but mainly along the ELP-lines material of their CD “Detrás Del Umbral” is much more structured, what stood out well on stage only in the vocal songs.
The second group of the day was a delegate of the RIO(Rock-In-Opposition)-genre, that looks like to be popular in America only: Thinking Plague. The very cleaver, but academic-sounding music could captivate a bit, but the irritating voice of Deborah Perry, that seems to be based on twelve-tone-music, made us leave the room after three songs. We definitely would have preferred Echolyn on this place (although I personally think this years Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic is a good choice; their album Petrophonics sounds very good).
Some of us had been looking forward to the next band, Il Balletto Di Bronzo. Unfortunately keyboard-player and singer-extraordinary Gianni Leone (the day before for a short while D.F.A.-guest) had the same habit as his colleague with Nexus: his interminable keyboard-acrobatics didn’t lead to anything, mainly because the lack of theme’s and recognisable solo’s. The only thing you wondered about was if it is normal that synthesizers also have distortion. Luckily there was a great bas-player, named Alessandro Corsi, so there was something to enjoy after all.
The second band from Sweden, Pär Lindh Project, was being accompanied by the brothers Kopecky. For people who know the records of their band Kopecky (heavy and subtle rock, with jazz-rock- and King Crimson-influences), it was clear that this would influence the classic sound of the project. But the show wasn’t becoming a reprise from Nexus and Il Balleto, not because of the playing of Lindh (he also produced over-the-top Organ-eruptions regularly), but because of the contribution of Magdalena Hagberg, although her hesitating violin-playing was sometimes absolutely out of tune, probably caused by a wrist-injury. Not everybody will appreciate the development of the band, but on the other hand it takes guts to try something else.
The festival was closed by the super-formation TransAtlantic. In the concert-room you could feel the same excitement as before the Happy The Man-concert and when the curtain finally went open the quartet was being treated with an ovation. The four musicians Neal Morse, Roine Stolt, Pete Trewavas and Mike Portnoy, who stood beside each other, put on a great show. They performed the material of “SMPTe” excellent, but also the extra stuff everybody was waiting for was great. Some went nuts when the Beatles-medley was played and the room was almost too small when the beginning tones of Watcher Of The Skies (that was followed by Firth Of Fifth and ended with The Return Of The Giant Hogweed) resounded. Of course there was a piece in which every musician could put a fragment of their own band, what caused much enthusiasm. Very memorable were the moments where little Trewavas walked on stage with the big double-barrelled Rickenbacker. Beside some technical problems (greatly illustrated by Morse when he throw his interfering head-microphone aside) and some not very nice sounding changes TransAtlantic was a worthy end of a beautiful festival.
Finally, after some misunderstandings, the French instrumental progressive jazz-rockband Priam opened the NEARfest 2000 in the Crocodile Rock Café in Allentown. Unfortunately the Café was much too small (and hot!) for so many people, so only few people have actually seen the musicians. Priam showed an interesting mix of floating symphonic rock and fierce jazz-rock, just as they did on their debut-CD “…3 Distances/Irregular Signs”. On the CD guitar-player Chris Casagrande gets a bit too much attention, on stage keyboard-player Laurent Lacombe-Colomb played himself into the picture with some great solos. This is certainly a band that thrives better on stage than in the studio, especially when they take the space to improvise within the compositions.
Echolyn stands for several years on the list of bands-I-want-to-see, some of us keep. It was good to hear the band reunited again and even made a new record, “Cowboy Poems Free”. The band showed they are back again! New percussion-player provided an extra drive in the compositions, that are driven already. The new compositions also showed that the men have grown after their last record, especially because they don’t put to much ideas in one song anymore. Unfortunately we couldn’t see the band, so they won’t be crossed off the list mentioned before.
Saturday June 17th
In the morning we arrived at the Zoellner Arts Centre of the Lehigh University in Bethlehem, the concert-room where the official NEARfest took place. North Star opened with a surprising concert. Their reunion-CD “Tempest” had a quite poor production, just like their other albums, but on stage the band produced a warm, full sound. It was striking to see how the musicians changed their instruments. Although the group is at the moment a instrumental trio, the original singer/bas-player Joe Newnam was especially for this concert back in the band and his charismatic appearance gave the music an extra dose of accessibility. Hopefully this concert will be released on CD, because it gave a so much better impression of North Star than their studio-albums.
The Italian band D.F.A. also made a strong appearance as could be expected after their two CD’s. After the symphonic rock of North Star the progressive rock with jazz-rock influences of this quartet gave the festival a perfect variety. The band has much in common with Yes and Gentle Giant, especially their staggering technique. This was sparkling, mainly instrumental symphonic jazz-rock, with a lot of space for subtleties.
After this tour de force we could relax with the relative save music from Ilúvatar. This outstanding example of a neo-progband is especially strong because of their sympathetic charisma en melodic compositions. Songs like “The Final Stroke” and “Late Of Conscience” maintain the highpoints within the oeuvre. The new epic “Indian Rain” (from the latest album “A Story Tow Days Wide” also showed that these gentlemen can create with apparently simple material a perfect atmosphere, but a little more show would do no harm.
Anekdoten from Sweden was a very different case. The attraction of the music from this quartet was quite simple in fact, but at the same time very effective. Every song brought the listeners very slowly to a climax of Mellotron-sounds, cello-displays en tearing guitar-riffs, with a perfect rhythm played by bass and drums that lovely sweeps you away. In fact, the concert of Anekdoten was one long trip, in which the songs became more melodic and compelling, judging by the new album “From Within”.
The closer of the day was the reformed Happy The Man. During the festival it turned out many people were there especially for this show. And this was proven with the standing ovation when the band came on stage. The high expectations weren’t disappointed: Happy The Man 2000 turned out to be the highlight of the festival for many people. With David Rosenthal (from Rainbow and Billy Joel) on the seat of Kit Watkins and drummer from the “Crafty Hands”-album Ron Riddle the band surpassed every expectation. Directly from the start with “Service With A Smile” all registers were pulled open and the perfect studio-sound produced by Ken Scott took a perfect shape. Rosenthal is a great showman, who was, together with Terry Bozzio-look- and –sound-alike Riddle, sweeping the more static looking (but absolutely not sounding) primal-members Rick Kennell, Frank Wyatt and Stan Whitaker into a show that only had highpoints. Beside many songs from the three studio-recordings “Happy The Man”, “Crafty Hands” and “3rd: Better Late” the five men also played some new pieces and they sounded so good that waiting for the new CD will take a long, long time for the fans (Better Late, part two?). NEARfest 2000 couldn’t go wrong anymore and some of us made the joke to go home tomorrow.
Sunday June 18th
Day two opened with the Argentine-based Nexus and a threatening, slightly Floydian, instrumental opening promised much. With the second piece this was confirmed, especially when singer Mariela González, who looked like a cross between an exotic princess from Rivendel and Redhair from the Don Lawrence-strip-serial Storm, came on stage. Unfortunately the band leaned, especially in the instrumental songs, too much on ego trippery, in which the screaming guitar-parts from Carlos Lucena and the long-winded keyboard-exercises from Lalo Huber sometimes got out of the hand completely. As far as that is concerned the partly Genesis-like, but mainly along the ELP-lines material of their CD “Detrás Del Umbral” is much more structured, what stood out well on stage only in the vocal songs.
The second group of the day was a delegate of the RIO(Rock-In-Opposition)-genre, that looks like to be popular in America only: Thinking Plague. The very cleaver, but academic-sounding music could captivate a bit, but the irritating voice of Deborah Perry, that seems to be based on twelve-tone-music, made us leave the room after three songs. We definitely would have preferred Echolyn on this place (although I personally think this years Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic is a good choice; their album Petrophonics sounds very good).
Some of us had been looking forward to the next band, Il Balletto Di Bronzo. Unfortunately keyboard-player and singer-extraordinary Gianni Leone (the day before for a short while D.F.A.-guest) had the same habit as his colleague with Nexus: his interminable keyboard-acrobatics didn’t lead to anything, mainly because the lack of theme’s and recognisable solo’s. The only thing you wondered about was if it is normal that synthesizers also have distortion. Luckily there was a great bas-player, named Alessandro Corsi, so there was something to enjoy after all.
The second band from Sweden, Pär Lindh Project, was being accompanied by the brothers Kopecky. For people who know the records of their band Kopecky (heavy and subtle rock, with jazz-rock- and King Crimson-influences), it was clear that this would influence the classic sound of the project. But the show wasn’t becoming a reprise from Nexus and Il Balleto, not because of the playing of Lindh (he also produced over-the-top Organ-eruptions regularly), but because of the contribution of Magdalena Hagberg, although her hesitating violin-playing was sometimes absolutely out of tune, probably caused by a wrist-injury. Not everybody will appreciate the development of the band, but on the other hand it takes guts to try something else.
The festival was closed by the super-formation TransAtlantic. In the concert-room you could feel the same excitement as before the Happy The Man-concert and when the curtain finally went open the quartet was being treated with an ovation. The four musicians Neal Morse, Roine Stolt, Pete Trewavas and Mike Portnoy, who stood beside each other, put on a great show. They performed the material of “SMPTe” excellent, but also the extra stuff everybody was waiting for was great. Some went nuts when the Beatles-medley was played and the room was almost too small when the beginning tones of Watcher Of The Skies (that was followed by Firth Of Fifth and ended with The Return Of The Giant Hogweed) resounded. Of course there was a piece in which every musician could put a fragment of their own band, what caused much enthusiasm. Very memorable were the moments where little Trewavas walked on stage with the big double-barrelled Rickenbacker. Beside some technical problems (greatly illustrated by Morse when he throw his interfering head-microphone aside) and some not very nice sounding changes TransAtlantic was a worthy end of a beautiful festival.
