Broad @ Sydney Opera House(19/08/07)

Wed 22nd Aug, 2007 in Gig Reviews

Broad, the all female concert series headed by Deborah Conway, has been getting rave reviews so far in its run this year, much like it has done for the past 2 years. Four female musicians, all with their own styles of music, join Deborah on stage and ignore the boundaries usually placed around them for a night… and the result is brilliant.

Hundreds of people turned out on a particularly stormy night at the Opera House (which is quite impressive in itself – the way the rain pours down the sails of the building is somewhat mesmerising). Surprisingly, it seemed the audience was heavily family based as mum, dad, the kids, and occasionally the grandparents, filed into the Concert Hall.

Abbe May, Sally Seltmann (New Buffalo), Jade McRae and Anne McCue joined Deborah on stage, spread out underneath large silhouettes of themselves hanging from the ceiling.
They joined together for the opening song, and then launched straight into Sally Seltmann’s Cheer Me Up, Thank You, which Sally later told the audience was pointing out that even the – œsimple, beautiful things in life can be amazing’, which set the tone for the evening.

In between the songs, Deborah would ask the others a question about their music, making the night sometimes feel like a serious forum for female singer songwriters, but it was never long before one of the girls would add a lighthearted, throw away line in there for comedic effect, making the night very entertaining even between songs.

Each performer was able to sing about 3 songs, with backing vocals added beautifully by the other performers. About half way into the night Jonathan, Matt and James (On double bass, drums and keyboard respectively), making the sound a whole lot bigger.

They were fairly constrained to their chairs, the main exception being when Deborah got up and danced during her rendition of Man Overboard. It did make me wonder if the show would have taken on a completely different tone, had the chairs not been there.

Overall the show was brilliant – combining such great talent on the one stage was hardly going to make us wonder whether it would be good or not, but to combine the talent so well was a feat. With musical styles ranging from R&B (Jade McRae) to Country (Anne McCue) to Sally Seltmann’s softly sung alternative style, this show not only throws the performers into the deep end of musical styles they may not have even attempted in the past, but the audience as well. How often would you get the same audience to both a Country and an R&B gig?

The show for me was summed up in one word – the final song in the encore was sung a cappella, and there was a moment of silence before the applause, during which someone whispered – œbeautiful’.