The Day I Fell In Love With The Violin
On Saturday the 23rd of February, we travelled over the Rimutukas to Alana Estate in Martinborough to catch the last concert of the In Tune With Nature Tour featuring Haley Westenra and Dave Dobbyn.
We arrived at Alana around 14:30 that afternoon and got through the gates by 15:00 and got great seats [via our own deck chairs] near the front of the stage. Settled in with a bottle of of Alana’s own Chardonnay we waited until the music began at 17:00.
I cannot remember all the songs performed, Dave opened with an older song, and followed it up with Loyal (which wasn’t too bad live in the end). He introduced the band and they had a great time performing all sorts of Dave’s material. Close to 18:00 Haley came up on stage and did a couple of duets with Dave including Welcome Home, which I must say is an awesome track, especially live with the two of them singing it together.
The highlight of my day at this concert occured after Dave and Haley left the stage for a half an hour interlude while the stage was setup for Haley’s band. About 18:30 this chick, Fiona Pears came up on stage with her violin and busted out a couple of tunes. I hadn’t really listened to much violin music before, but Fiona came out and performed something epic. Her stage presence was huge, and she really got into it, fully animated. She begun each tune with a story on where she was and what inspired her to write it, just added to the epicness of her whole performance.
After she had finished, Haley came back on stage, with Fiona and we listened to Haley sing for the next hour. She sung songs from her album Pure, her new album Treasure and one from the LotR soundtrack. All were pretty amazing, and I found myself enjoying her style of music. Dave came back up on stage for another duet with Haley, when that was over the crowd were up on their feet applauding crying out “one more” (which I’m more used to hearing punters yell at the Dj at the end of a gig 😉) and they pleased us with Welcome Home again. I must say I think they belted it out better than they did earlier. I love that track!
After the music stoped I made my way up to the merchandice tent and picked up a copy of Fiona’s album Doorways to Distant Lands then saw that she was over in the next tent signing autographs, What the heck. My brother and I lined up and had a chat to her, let her know that we enjoyed her performance earlier, we had a chat and she signed the CD. Lovely girl. Nice conclusion to the evening.
All in all, we all had a great time, especially seeing as this is something I would not have normally done. Looking forward to doing more like it soon.
Will sort out some photos from the concert later on. Stay tuned.
