The Santa Fe Opera
My birthday was in August, and this year my friends treated me to the Roberta Flack concert (with Shawn Colvin) at the Santa Fe Opera which was to include a nice tailgate dinner.
To be honest, most of my friends are older than I am and Roberta Flack was a little before my time (and I had never even heard of Shawn Colvin), so I was more excited about spending a nice evening with my friends than I was about actually seeing the performances.
Tailgating at the opera is a tried-and-true steezy pastime in Santa Fe, unfortunately the day was rainy and we decided to have the diner before we went to the concert.
The Crosby Theater Sign
As I said, I had never heard of Shawn Colvin. She had a nice voice and interacted with the audience well.
Here is a picture of Shawn Colvin with Ernie. Shawn must be Ernie's beard because I was told that he is gay. Or, maybe Shawn is a plushie. Would that make Ernie a fleshie? I don't know. What I do know is that all those pervs out there seem to get really bent when you don't identify their kink using the proper terminology. So, I am sorry if I offended any of you fur freaks.
Shawn Colvin and Ernie
Anyway...Shawn was great except that she started killing me softly with folksong—her set lasted about 45 minutes! I sat in my seat wondering if Shawn just didn't realize that this was my birthday concert and I was really there to see the other chick, or if she was intentionally taunting me.
Either way, I needed a drink and fortunately our seats were mere steps from my favorite Opera bar.
My favorite spot at the Opera.
This is a patio area just to the right of the stage. There is a bar here and you can have your cocktail and still be able to watch the performace—a great steezy tip for those times when you can only get SRO tickets.
Finally Roberta and her 16 piece orchestra got on stage. Roberta received a lifetime achievement award from AgeNation and we were told that the proceeds of the concert were to benefit Empower New Mexico (don't ask me what either of those two things are).
Of the sixteen piece orchestra, I think that fifty of them were backup singers. The other was this Kenny G dude on the sax. So needless to say, we heard a lot of backup vocals and plenty of saxaphone.
I figured that this extra background music was because Roberta is like 1000 years old. I thought that they would probably prop her up on the piano, plug her in and try to cover up any of the age-jenky vocals that come out of her mouth.
BUT...
When Roberta did sing, her voice, at least to me, sounded just as pure and clean as some of the recordings that I have heard. I immediately recognized many of the songs and felt transported to the 70's.
Since that concert, I have listened to several recordings and watched some videos of Roberta and my opinion stands—Roberta, you still sound great.
Roberta's voice sounded just like this:
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