There was much anticipation of the Tommy Emmanuel concert at Calgary’s Jack Singer concert hall. I literally felt giddy earlier this evening upon dressing in blazer and slacks wondering what exactly what was about to unfold. I have watched his youtube rendition of “Classical Gas” about 20 times and “Lewis and Clark” probably ten. I’ve listened to other players rave about his prowess on acoustic guitar. J.P. Cormier ranks him as the best in the world. Other youtubers also put him there.
Made a point of getting there early. I was by myself and envisioned some sharing among a kindred spirit in the lobby. I walked right in and chatted up William. He had just stumbled on his ticket and never heard of the guy. His party hadn’t yet arrived so I eagerly set William up for the evening at hand.
Sat next to Kevin. He was a mandolin player so that was cool. He had just heard Christie Lenee at a folk club here in town and came to know about Tommy via the Christie crowd. Surprisingly, the place was not sold out and the top floor bar was closed.
Unassuming is how I’d characterize his demeanour as he took the stage. He jumped right into lively new material from his latest album. This helped him shake off some nerves. He was a bit tight early into the first set and I was thinking about the sound. The Jack Singer concert hall is spectacular and is particularly amenable to acoustic sound yet he was running his signal through a PA. I knew in advance that this is his typical large auditorium set up and was slightly disappointed that he didn’t decide to just run via acoustic amp akin to Cormier.
“Angelina” and “Never Too Late” came up in the first set and they were both done beautifully. He plays from the heart and his stage show is fantastic. There were no shortage of fast lead lines in between ballads and he wowed the crowd with a demo of his one man band methodology. One song in particular ran half way through full of one note harmonics only. I wondered if he was going to strike a chord and he finally did. This was the talking point between Kevin and I at half time. The precision just to hit consecutive harmonics is tricky never mind half a song worth of them.
I had never heard the song “Eva Waits” and it was solemnly melodic stemming from the story of separated love at the Berlin wall. Despite being fully cognizant of his penchant for using a guitar top for percussion…he dazzled my mind by gymnastically eliciting every imaginable sound from a guitar fixed with a mic and pick up. This was breath taking for him and us.
Tommy didn’t disappoint by bringing his reknown Beatles Medley topped off with select lines from Classical Gas. The Billy Joel song “And So It Goes” was flawless and closed with a colorful story of the “added bridge”. Eric Clapton was on his mind so he brought out an old run down Maton specially equipped with effects in and ode a la creme de la Cream.
