NOKIA Night of the Proms 2009

November 30th, 2009 by Peter Glaeser | RSS feed for comments on this post | TrackBack URI

I’ve just returned from the NOKIA Night of the Proms at the O2 World in Berlin. I’m still impressed so I thought of writing a few words about the show.

It’s an almost four-hour concert/show with a mixture of classical music and a number of pop/rock acts. They used to be famous 20-30 years ago and are obviously less expensive these days. So it’s actually possible to get them perform in one tour. Almost all songs are accompanied by a full symphonic orchestra and a choir.

In my opinion the most outstanding musician was John Miles. He started out with an amazing interpretation of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven” where he accompanied himself on the piano and threw in a killer guitar solo.

The range of John’s voice is incredible even though he turned 60 this year. When he performed a jazz tune it sounded as if Frank Sinatra was singing. He hit every single note, not a single mistake. This is truly one of the world’s top musicians. He finished his part with his “Music” (was my first love …).

The other highlight was Roxette, the Swedish pop duo of Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle that was big in the 80s and 90s. They were big in Europe and became famous in the U.S. with the Pretty Woman soundtrack (with Richard Gere faking on the piano in the music video).

In 2002 Marie was diagnosed with a brain tumor, got treatment and is probably still taking strong medication. She still doesn’t look alright, can’t walk much and couldn’t jump up and down the stage as she used to ten years ago. Her voice is still unique and sounds like her. But it’s lost a lot of range and she had problems hitting the high pitches. However, Per still rocks the house and made up for Marie’s limitations.

Thank you for putting this show together. This was the second time I went. I will certainly come back next year.