Monday, December 31, 2007

Count Basie Orchestra & Ledisi at Yoshi's, San Faancisco

Quick take...the band cooked and Ledisi is just an amazing talent. I was familiar with her earlier R & B work, but she worked it out last night. Her phrasing and timing (and scatting) were fantastic and her voice...she blew people away, and rightly so. Her range is fairly large and her clarity is just...wow. I can't wait to see her again in a venue like that. You could also tell she was clearly excited to work with a band like the Basie orchestra (she even had her high school jazz teacher conducting them while she sang)!

The acoustics in the concert hall are great, definitely built for jazz. The crowd was petty good...thankfully, people were actually into the music and there was not a lot of talking going on during the performance.

Downsides were the seating (packed in too tightly) and the drink service (not attentive). I think our server was either drunk or stoned (or a coke fiend)...she came around right after we got seated and it took her probably 15-20 minutes to bring the drinks out. Next time she came around was with our bill as the last song was about to start (two drink minimum and we only had one). I'll blame that on it being the holidays and the place probably being a tad understaffed.

Overall, a great experience and I can't wait to see some more shows there.

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