Rosa has been a fan of Peruvian singer Eva Ayllón since long before she met me. I've found her some CDs and videos over the years but they have been very hard to come by up here.
Recently, when I, once again, commented that she had no "wish list" (HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEETIE!) She said she would like a recording of her more recent concerts. While trying to hunt for them, searching generally on the web in the early summer for "Eva Ayllón concert" I found absolutely no DVDs or Blu Rays available. However, I did notice she was going to be appearing not only in New York city but also at the Shea's Performing Arts Center at William Paterson University in Wayne!
This however, ended up harder to figure out than it originally seemed, as the link from the singer's website was to a false front, and the William Paterson site didn't list the show at all. Rosa called the box office and was told when to check back for availability. When the web site finally listed it... seat selection didn't work.
Rosa called and ordered the tickets over the phone eventually.
It was well worth the aggravation. Especially since it was the first night of Anabelle's fall break, meaning we could attend as a family.
Because we can't have a normal drive to a concert ever, even though I was pretty sure it was right next to where i work, the GPS made me think it wasn't by giving us a weird back way there. When I made a "wrong turn" leaving the parking lot (based on my GPS always getting stunad in parking lots) at the end of the night, we WERE about a block away from where I work.
In the lobby before hand, I thought I saw one other white guy in the crowd, but he just worked there. Once again, I represented the "rhythm impaired" at what can only be described as an incredibly joyous event.
The official reason for the tour was celebrating Fifty Five years of Eva Ayllón performing. She had special guest Daniela Darcourt (a Peruvian salsa singer, actress and dancer) as her special guest.
The younger singer often tried to move over into the background, but Eva Ayllón kept her at center stage. In general she did an amazing job of both holding everyone's attention as the lead attraction of the show, while still featuring and highlighting everyone else performing, as true stars do.
While my legendary sucking at languages prevents me from speaking it, my Spanish comprehension is pretty good. I could follow along with almost everything said with one exception. Aside from being an outstanding musical performer, Eva Ayllón has excellent comic timing. This meant whenever she told a joke, she'd speed up at the punch line and I'd miss out.
Joyous is really the only way to describe the evening. The entire audience (except me) was singing along and dancing in their seats, many waving Peruvian flags of varied sizes. My joy was added to considerably by the fact that, even when Daniela Darcourt encouraged everyone to get up and dance for certain songs, we all got to sit back down in our chairs when those were over.
Her band was sensational, all equally energetic and she provided each with moments in the spotlight.
There was a single back up singer but, more often than not, the two leads would pull her forward to center stage to sing and dance with them. She held her own with the two amazing performers.
Not one, but two keyboard players were in the group, one on each side of the stage, dancing at their stations, singing back up, and adding a great deal of depth to the sound.
There was a bass player on a five string fretless absolutely living in and around the beats he was laying down.
The acoustic guitarist was the only one who barely danced (aside from me), standing stock still and utterly focused on picking out incredibly intricate classical Spanish guitar melodies.
The back riser had the horn section: three guys who dove into the music throughout the entire performance.
The trombone player looked a little older than the other two, but kept himself moving to the tunes whether he was or wasn't playing.
The saxophone guy wailed along to most numbers, but picked up a flute for some of the more delicate sounding ones.
Any lack of movement by the guitarist was more than made up for by the lanky trumpet player who flailed his extra long limbs around to the songs as he blew various melodies on his horn.
Then there were the percussionists.
One guy occasionally used a regular drum set but spent most of the night sitting on a stool playing incredible rhythms using only a set of "thimbles" and a wooden box.
The man hammering out beats on the conga drums would occasionally ignore them to add maraca or other shaker sounds while dancing with the singers.
Finally, there was the bongo player. His moments of glory, however, were when he left his drums behind and salsa-ed out to the foreground to interact with the singers while absolutely going to town on the cowbell. Anabelle termed his performance- "Life Goals" on one side of Rosa, while I stated, "I want to be cowbell guy when I grow up" on the other.
The secretness continued after the show. Not only was there zero merchandise, but the event wasn't listed at all on the posters, video screens or brochures with the venue's season schedule on them. Weird. It must have been run wholly independently.
All in all, it was a magnificent, artistic and insanely fun evening.
The bonus of getting to share her really happy, excited, singing, cheering and and dance filled moments with my wife and our daughter was extra special.
End note- I used the performers full names each time they were mentioned as I had to cut and paste them or I would NEVER spell them correctly. That even applies to "cowbell guy."
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