Experience BRILLiAnce

When a good friend of mine invited me to see a singer I had no idea what to expect. She refused to give me any clues as to what I would witness. What I found was a true diamond in the sky.

My friend Mary, had attended an open air concert by Esperanza Spalding at the TD Jazz Festival and happened to be sitting next to a young lady. They struck up a conversation and soon the young lady had to leave because she was a singer herself and was off to her own gig.  Before leaving she left my friend with her contact information.  

Not long after that, my friend decided to check her out live at the Resevoir Lounge and was moved by her incredible vocal ability.

I saw her at the Amsterdam Bicycle Club, a small bar on The Esplanade, a chic, tiny stretch of bars in the core of Toronto.

Alysha "Brilla" Brillinger took to the stage at 10 pm sharp, strumming her guitar, and accompanied by Sam Dlugokecki on the cajón. She opened her set with the Jackson 5's I Want You Back.

I was immediately taken by Brilla's playful open handed guitar  strumming which made every song sound fun. Her stunning, soulful voice channeled Amy Winehouse.

What ensued was a serious of cover songs with Brilla's own originals distributed through the night. Her originals were as good, if not better than anything she covered, and what she covered ran the gamut from the aforementioned Amy Winehouse (Valerie) , to Bob Marley (Stir it Up) to Jessie J (Money).

Throughout the night she was joined by guests, Mark who laid down a rendition of Let's Get it On that was so good you know Marvin was smiling down it. Djembe by Garima Harvey added to Sam D's drumming. Brilla reminded the audience that percussion was the first sound we heard in the womb as a fetus hearing our mother's heartbeat.

During her third and final set of the night Brilla wss joined by a musician that she drew a lot of inspiration from, her father, Yasin Dewji. He stood at the back of the stage playing bass guitar.

The night climaxed with a packed dance floor grooving to Brilla's anthemic Lifted. What a great night. Brilla has a weekly residency at the Amsterdam Bicycle Club and I was already looking forward to the next Thursday night I could make it down there and if you have the opportunity, you should go check her out too!

Experience BRILLiAnce here:

Prince's Welcome 2 Canada Tour

For more than half of my life I was a die-hard Prince fan.  It started when I first saw Purple Rain and was solidified when I saw Prince live in early December of 1985 on the Purple Rain tour.  Prince has released at least one album every year since 1978 and as far as I was concerned every single one of them was genius material.

Then one day in mid 2010, I was listing to Prince’s Twenty10 album I realized that the music was not good.   Then it dawned on me that the album before that was not good either, nor the one before that, I had to think back to late ‘80s to find an album that was great. 

Over the years I’ve been lucky to see Prince perform live many, many times.  He’s so good live that I’ve often travelled for his shows.  Aside from my hometown of Toronto, I’ve seen him in Montreal, Buffalo, New York and Minneapolis where on July 7^th, 2007 I was lucky enough to see two of his shows in one day, first at the Target Center and then at 1^st Avenue, on the very stage where Purple Rain was filmed.  That was the last time I’d seen him until a month ago.

Pince symbol shaped stage
Photo courtesy www.skinnydip.ca

On November 25^th, 2011 Prince kicked off his Welcome 2 Canada tour in Toronto and I already had a commitment out of town, so I had to miss it.  I ended up catching him in Ottawa a week later at Scotiabank Place on December 3^rd, 2011. 

I was super-hyped to see this show, it utilized the same amazing stage that was used for Prince’s performance at the Super Bowl four years prior.  It was shaped like the hieroglyph which Prince had used as a name for a few years. 

He opened the show with the song D.M.S.R. (Dance Music Sex Romance), from the “1999” album which was released in 1982.   The music was thumping and Prince looked more like a 20-something than a 53 year old.  I was rather surprised to see how lithe he was, considering that it was well documented that he had a bad hip from his years of high-heel wearing, however he could not take the hip replacement surgery due to his religion which forbids him from having a blood transfusion. 

Prince brought the funk throughout the night and he focused mainly on his music from the early to mid-80s.  The one exception was the song “Guitar” from 2007’s “Planet Earth” album and when he played that song it was so unfamiliar to the audience that the energy in room just deflated, even though it was a very energetic song.  It was clear that he’d lost his audience with this one and he quickly returned to the ‘80s bangers. 

This was the first time that I wasn’t familiar with the whole band line-up.  Of course I recognized a couple of the musicians that had been with Prince for a while.  The prestigious Maceo Parker was featured on saxophone.  John Blackwell, who was with Prince on 2004’s Musicology tour returned as his drummer, but not very well featured.  A newcomer to the band, Andy Allo, is a female rapper and backup singer, was stunningly gorgeous wearing a print top that featured her own face. 

Prince with Andy Allo performing at the Montreal Jazz Festival.
Photo courtesy of  www.lipstickalley.com

Andy Allo is featured on a rap during Prince’s song “Extralovable” which had been released the week before to coincide with the launch of the tour. Interestingly, the song was originally recorded in the early ‘80s, during the sessions for the 1999 album.  It was never released and finally Prince went back on re-recorded it.  In fact he mentioned that he plans to release three different versions of the song.  The original was a brutally misogynistic piece, but the new version was considerably softened.

So here’s Prince with a new song from the early ‘80s and almost every song he performed in the show was from the ‘80s. It was if he had come to same conclusion as I had about how much his more recent works lacked relevance.  Although he never did perform “Extralovable”, he did perform three songs from The Time, a group that was a prodigy of his, and it is generally accepted that he wrote most of the their songs and produced their albums.

 Prince rarely performs songs exactly like the record, his thinking is that it’s got to be better than the record, his songs are his babies and they continue to grow through years, but I was thrilled that the guitar solo ending of “Let’s Go Crazy” was a duplicate of the record, as was the guitar solo in “Purple Rain”. 

A really cool part of the show had Prince playing with a synthesizer that triggered samples of various songs.  He teased the crowd with one song or the next.  Prince’s mission with this show was to turn the arena into a dance club.  I think he succeeded.  I think Prince is one of the greatest concert performers of all time and I truly believe every other musician or serious music fan is missing out if they do not see him live.  Yet, maybe it was just me, but I couldn’t help to think that Prince failed to connect with the audience at this show.  This is one of Prince’s fortes, building a repertoire with the crowd and I didn’t sense that this time. I felt that he wasn’t totally engaged on this outing.  He had after all just played Montreal, one of the greatest cities on the planet the night before, so maybe he was tired on this bone chillingly cold night in Canada’s capital city.  

Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour by Cirque du Soleil

After Michael Jackson passed away I was so touched by the number of people who told me that they thought of me when it happened.  Even people that I grew up with but had lost contact with over 20 years ago remembered how fanatical I was about Michael Jackson.  The truth is that I had forgotten how much I loved MJ.  It's sad. The music is so timeless that I see young children today who share in the same fervent love for his music as I did over 25 years ago.  

Tonight I attended the Cirque du Soleil show, "The Immortal".  I went in blind - I had no idea what to expect.  I've been disappointed by Cirque shows in the past, where I felt that they were too bourgeoisie for my taste.   More recently though, I saw the Cirque show “Believe” in Las Vegas which was thoroughly entertaining. 

The one thing that I did hear about this tribute to MJ prior to seeing the performance was a tweet stating that if you are in any way a fan of MJ, this show is a must-see.  I absolutely concur.

I was very touched by this show.  It went beyond being an absolute fitting tribute to the beauty of MJ’s soul.  I imagined that this would have been a show that MJ himself would have been happy to have been a part of.   I felt that wherever his spirit was that, he was seeing this show and he was proud of it.  They captured his very essence, his message and his music.  

Kid Rock Born Free Concert at the Air Canada Concert

Kid Rock’s Born Free Tour exploded into the Air Canada Centre on May 27th 2011. After a nice opening set by hometown based The Trews, the highlight of which was their poignant “Highway of Heroes”, Kid Rock and his Twisted Brown Trucker band unleashed a masterpiece of a show.


It opened with a video collage of photos and video footage from when he was young up to the present and then he made his entrance on the stage which looked like an old-time bar in someone’s basement, with wood paneling, and members of the band set up on the bar counter tops.
He walked through the saloon doors in the centre and just totally rocked out. I loved that songs from his lesser known most recent and most mellow album, Born Free, were sprinkled between the crowd rousers.

Midway through the show he talked about turning 40 earlier this year and a video played greetings from many celebrities, mainly talk show hosts sending him birthday wishes. He then informed the crowd that he intended to turn this whole tour into a yearlong 40th birthday party and launched into a hilarious song, “Fuckin’ 40”, which I could certainly relate to.

His greatest songs, “Cowboy” and “Bawidaba” were executed to perfection and I was happy that he played some other personal favourites, “Sugar” which for some reason he hadn’t played on his “Rock N’ Roll Jesus” tour, as well, he led us into the chant of his name from “3 Sheets to Wind” before taking to the DJ decks for a demonstration of incredible scratching, while pouring himself a shot of Jim Beam and then standing up on the bar top all the while continuing to scratch, he then played some lead guitar before taking over the drum kit.

At one point, five bar stools were set up in the middle of the stage as three guitarists, including Rock and the two backup singers sat down to play. Rock introduced the song by saying before he had hit the road an interviewer asked what could be expected from this tour, his response was “Strippers and stripping down”. By stripping down he was referring to the acoustic rendition of “Purple Sky” which followed. By the way the strippers were fantastic too.

Aside from excellent music and musicianship the there was a full-fledged visual assault of pyrotechnics, lasers, fireworks, video effects, to compliment the aforementioned strippers, all of which just totally worked and never seemed overdone, or detracted from the incredible music.

Kid Rock himself, in my opinion, best showman of this century, was so spirited, jumping around, dancing, high-fiving members of the audience, acknowledging signs and giving the audience his sincere gratitude for spending our hard earned money to come see him.

The encore consisted of a wonderful, funky stripped down version “All Summer Long” with Kid Rock dancing and playing maracas. He then sat down at the piano to play “Only God Knows Why”. The piano rose out of the stage revealing USA and Canada flags as it turned a 360 and then Kid Rock climbed up on top of the piano until it retracted back into the stage. He closed with the best song of the “Born Free” album, which is its title track.

I’ve been to many great concerts throughout the years, but this one concert, was the best I’ve ever witnessed.

10 *s