0
0
There are primarily two venues on the east side of Lake Washington that host yearly outdoor concert series, Marymoor Park and Ste. Michelle Winery. I’ve attended many concerts at Marymoor but never at Ste. Michelle. I’m not sure why, many of the artists are ones that I like and Ste. Michelle is literally the closest concert venue to where we live.
Anyway, I went to see Regina Spektor Saturday night so now I can say I’ve attended a concert at the winery. It turns out it’s a very nice venue, as you would probably expect. The capacity is ~4,500 and pretty much all the concerts sell out. It was far easier to enter and exit the property than I thought it would be, which was nice. Even after the concert it was probably less than 30 minutes to walk back to the truck and exit. Marymoor takes a lot longer than that. The only thing I learned is that I unknowingly paid for premium parking, which was nice but there is free parking and a shuttle a half mile away and if I’d known that I wouldn’t have paid for the parking. Oh well…
I’ve been fascinated by Regina Spektor for years. She’s quirky and ridiculously talented. I have no idea what her vocal range is but more than how many octaves she can sing it’s how she uses her voice that I find intriguing. On some of her songs she sang acapella but used her voice in between singing words to add a beat to the song. On some songs she’ll mimic accents or in the case of one song that includes a reference to dolphins, she mimics how the dolphin might sing. It’s not for everyone but I find it very interesting.
Regina was born in Russia and both her parents were musicians so she started playing piano and composing songs at an early age. The family is Jewish and was able to emigrate from Russia when Regina was nine years old, eventually ending up in New York. Regina was listening to Western music before she understood English and she has said that had an influence on her, in that to her the song is more about the sound than the meaning of the lyrics. That said, most of her songs tell some sort of story, not necessarily autobiographical, but more things that she imagines.
At Ste. Michelle, Regina performed without any backing band, just her and a piano or keyboard, and on a few songs just acapella. Like I said, she is ridiculously talented. On several songs she would play piano with one hand and tap out a beat with the other while singing. I can’t even walk a chew gum at the same time!
It was a great show, made all the better by the people around me. There was a couple who were celebrating their twelfth wedding anniversary, a fascinating couple who shared a similar interest in hiking and are restoring an old cabin on Orcas Island (separate things for sure but both interesting topics to me), and a mother and daughter. The daughter lives in Eugene and was visiting her mom and I got the impression the concert was kind of a last minute thing, where the daughter had a spare ticket but didn’t have anyone else coming so her mom said, sure, I’ll go. The mom was telling about how she grew up near Woodstock (not the town but the farm where the Woodstock music festival was hosted in 1969). She was 14 at the time and attended all three days but was too nervous to spend the night so she hitchhiked back and forth from home. Try doing that today…
Anyway, a good time and now that I know what a nice venue Ste. Michelle is I’ll probably be attending concerts there more often.
