Belinda Carlisle – finally!

In August 2021 Nadia and I bought tickets to go see Belinda Carlisle in concert in February 2022.

Screenshot of a ticket purchase confirmation email that reads, “Ameel, You’re In!”. The ticket is for a Belinda Carlisle concert at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda for 8pm on Friday, 11 February 2022.

Unfortunately, the concert got rescheduled thrice: twice because of pandemic lockdowns and once because Belinda was having knee-replacement surgery.

But three years later it all finally worked out :)

Photo of a man and woman standing in front of a massive poster for Belinda Carlisle’s ‘Decades’ tour at the Palais Theatre.

And the concert was great!

Photo of an indoor concert stage on which Belinda Carlisle and her band are performing.

I thought I’d come out of this with one of her mega hits stuck in my head, but instead it was In Too Deep and Big Scary Animal – both of which I love. So yay!

Ludovico Einaudi at Sidney Myer Bowl

After a day at the Australian Open tennis, Nadia and I went to the the Sidney Myer Bowl to watch the fantastic Ludovico Einaudi on his Seven Days Walking world tour.

This is ten minutes before the performance started.

A large crowd is seated on a hill overlooking an open air stage area, the front of which is visible to the extreme left of the photo.

And here’s the man himself, along with his accompanying performers on violin and cello.

A stage showing a man playing a grand piano while two performers on the other side of the piano are playing a violin and cello.

My favourite bit of the performance, I think, was when the three musicians improvised what they were playing based on the outline of peaks of three mountain ranges in the Alps (where Einaudi was when he came up with the music for Seven Days Walking).

Three performers are stage on playing a grand piano, violin, and cello. They’re looking at a massive screen behind the stage, across which three coloured lines show the outline of mountain ranges. The musicians are each following one line and are adjusting their music based on what these overlapping coloured lines are doing as they’re drawn across the screen.

Even if you’re not into classical music you should check Einaudi out. If nothing else listen to ‘Night’, which is my favourite track from his 2015 ‘Elements’ album.

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra's Chinese New Year concert

One of the highlights of this week was watching the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s (MSO) annual Chinese New Year concert.

This year’s East Meets West show was all about “symphony meets rock ‘n roll” and it featured the MSO and Beijing-based Mongolian rock band Hanggai.

If you haven’t heard Hanggai before, here’s one of their songs they performed (accompanied by the MSO).

Moby, Live in Melbourne

So earlier this month I was fortunate enough to see one of my favourite musicians, Moby, live in concert (with opening acts Kelli Scarr and Tim & Jean) at the Palace Theatre in Melbourne.

This was probably the best concert I have ever attended. Yes, it was even better than watching The Police live at the MCG on Australia Day a couple of years ago. I guess it helps that I own almost every Moby album and that I knew all of the songs he played :)

Instead of writing much about it, I’m just going to share some of the photos and video snippets that I took.

Photos

Opening number:

Opening number

Joy Malcolm and Moby:

Joy Malcom and Moby

Kelli Scarr and Moby:

Kelli Scarr and Moby

The whole band at the end of a song:

The whole band at the end of a song

Joy Malcom and crowd participation:

Joy Malcom and crown partcipation

Videos

‘Bodyrock

 

‘Porcelain

 

‘Disco Lies

 

‘Feeling so Real’ and concert end

 

It was awesome.