[Set_Buildin_Dad]

Well, the family went to see Idina Menzel in her concert tour kickoff performance last night. Idina was on stage for a good hour and 45 minutes. She performed a variety of material, but concentrated on the stuff she’s written for her new album. A lot of the stuff has a very similar sound to it, but there were a couple of notable exceptions. “Time to be Brave” is a really nice song and she performed it well. Idina also did a love song for us that she had written for Taye. She had a 4 piece band and two backup singers as part of the act.

Idina spent a lot of time interacting with the audience. She had a good rapport with the crowd, most of who were obviously big Wicked fans. She talked a lot about her life, her family and her early career as a wedding singer. She even performed a few of the standards from those days including “The Girl from Ipanima” and “My Sweet Embraceable You”. The flow of the concert was a little rough around the edges as this was her first concert and she is still getting a feel for what works with the audience.

Idina performed “Life Support” from Rent, but the highlight of the night for Wicked fans was when she brought a young girl out of the audience and sang “Defying Gravity” with her. This was a result of the girl asking Idina during one of the question and answer interludes if she would be performing any songs from Wicked. Idina told her she’d only do it if the girl would sing it with her. The kid looked to be about 10 years old and was very nervous when Idina hauled her up on stage. To her credit, the kid did a decent job, and Idina looked like she had a great time sharing the stage with the kid. The song was performed to the re-mix arrangement that Idina had on her website for a while.

On the whole the evening was quite enjoyable. The crowd was small, but enthusiastic. We opted not to “stage door” Idina as there was a large crowd of teenagers waiting to do so and the evening was getting late. I think a few of my daughter’s friends did hang around, so I’ll probably get a report on Idina’s stage door manners tonight when I get home.

[Gwen]

Well that was nice of her to pull the girl onstage to sing with her.

[nycbound]

Idina is going to be in my area in a few weeks and I really want to see her. Unfortunately, it looks like I'm going to have rehearsal that night.

But, you never know, rehearsal schedules have been known to change!

[Set_Buildin_Dad]

Well Idina predicted this when she busted some guy filming her concert. There are already bootlegs on YouTube. Because the kid's performance was so cute I'm posting a link of the Defying Gravity sequence here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LKgMR5WRcs&eurl=http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=idina&hl=en&sitesearch=

Defying Gravity starts about 5 min into the clip.

[The Very Angry Woman]

A friend of mine went to the Santa Barbara concert and had a blast.

I'm not surprised at the speediness of some of Idina's fans.

[broadwaybirdie]

wow that girl is going to remember that for the rest of her life.

[mastachen]

She's going to have a concert at The Grove... or was that the one you went to, SBD?

Either way, for some reason, I decided that I couldn't go... couldn't remember the reason, but it sucks

[Set_Buildin_Dad]

[WickedElphie5808]

I went to her concert last night in St. Louis. It was fantastic. She really interacted with the audience. She told pretty many life stories, so that was really cool!!
And I would say the best part of the night would have to be when she busted some kid recording the show!! It was hilarious!! She said that she has been staring at that little red light for 20 minutes, and she knows its going to be on youtube!! So she took her camera, and starting recording everything. But it was soooooo funny!!
The only bad thing is she didnt sing Let Me Fall or I Feel Everything (two of my favorite songs ) But on the other hand, she sang two Wicked songs!! For Good, which I thought was really cute. And of course, Defying Gravity was her closing song. It was really cool, at the end she had the audience sing along with her!!
I just had a great night, and it sure did seem like Idina did too!