I’m pretty late watching the latest vids of David’s Christmas Tour, due to internet service glitches at home which we finally resolved just yesterday.

SB, thank you for your wonderfully written article on the SLC concerts. It is one of those enviable experiences you read about that makes a David concert in Utah a must-see in someone’s bucket list.

JR, thank you so much for all your hardwork and the sleepless nights just so TDCers and lurkers can get to view the wonderful vids at the different concert venues. I am currently blissfully listening to the mp3′s you have converted from the YT vids of emilyluvsarchie’s ninja recording at the Ann Arbor concert. There are so many vids to catch up on, especially the recent ones from Santa Rosa and San Francisco. Whew!

My latest favorites from David’s recent performances are (in order of preference) : 1. Fields of Gold (Ann Arbor), 2. Prayer of the Children (Bakersfield), 3. To Be With You (Ann Arbor), 4. The Riddle (Ann Arbor), 5. O Holy Night, Silent Night & What Child Is This (SLC 2)

May I just credit NP1107 for having the vids with the best combination of both video and audio quality from the Bakersfield concert. I wish she/he had more vids from this concert. And Genevievewang’s closeup vids at Santa Rosa are just, wow!

Fields of Gold. I may be late at this but allow me as well to shamelessly swoon over David’s Fields of Gold. No wonder it is worthy of an article all by itself. David is stunning in all his performances of this song, with Eva Cassidy’s version as his inspiration. How can you not shed even a single tear listening to him sing this? The stirring instrumental intro with his haunting “hoooohhhh…” is just a few seconds into the song, and yet a chill runs through your body by the sheer beauty of his emotive voice. And the rest of the song renders you vulnerable and weak to a myriad of emotions that go thru various phases of being in the state of love, the kind that starts with infatuation, to profound intimacy and knowledge of one’s life partner, to an unconditional love, then to a love that endures till old age and beyond one’s existence. I had never thought a song from Sting could be a romantic song of the highest order, and it’s real essence was revealed only thru David’s rendition.

The Ann Arbor performance with a backing live orchestra was mind and heart-boggling. Give me violins and the harp anytime, I turn to mush! It was the one that killed me to pieces and convinced me that David is an old soul who has lived a beautiful and fulfilled life before, somewhere in a place absolutely wonderful beyond anything I could ever imagine. He just came back to make us believe it is all possible, and he takes us there whenever he sings. And we who open our hearts to him are lucky enough to experience it if only for the length of a song or of a whole concert. No wonder we keep wanting to listen to him sing because we don’t ever want the euphoria to end.

I let my husband listen to NP1107′s Bakersfield FOG on my laptop. He chides me forever for being a diehard Archie, is puzzled by and yet accepting of my discreet fanaticism. But he is a long-time Sting fan. After listening to David’s FOG, he sheepishly agreed that it was beautiful. Several minutes later, I caught him humming FOG, so I offered to let him listen again, this time to the Ann Arbor performance, because it was the next one on my mp3 player (what great timing!). He remarked that he knew of Sting’s Fields of Gold, and that he had to be reminded of it’s tune. I shared my right earbud with him, and he listened quietly to it till it ended. Then I said, “Grabe, ang ganda di ba?” And he again agreed, “Oo nga, ang ganda ganda.” Translation = Me: It’s incredibly beautiful, isn’t it? Him: Yes, it’s really beautiful.

Prayer of The Children at Bakersfield. I’ve listened to Bestor’s a capella arrangement in a Gregorian chant version which I considered pale in comparison to David’s heart-rending, standing-ovation-worthy a capella performance months ago. But, OMG, NP1107′s vid of this at Bakersfield, with David’s pre-banter about the various charities supported by his fans, left me soulfully pensive. With just a piano backing him up, David gave the song a subtly mature power, slightly different in spirit from his a capella version which projected youthful awareness. The arrangement was more tender, a gentle but powerful nudge to the soul, a reminder that we and our children are more fortunate than those in troubled countries. If only the children who he sings this for could listen to the most amazing young human being speaking in their behalf thru music. I was tearful for the stretch of the song, and found myself in a prayerful stance by the end of it. David admitted he made a mistake in his a capella rendition which I hardly noticed until he mentioned it. In this piano-backed performance, he was flawless and exquisite. He had outdone himself again.

To Be With You at Ann Arbor. David’s solo performance of this song with the Ann Arbor orchestra trumps all his other performances in his duets with Kara and Kendra. Sorry girls, but David’s vocals alone are enough for me. His glory note in “…that waaaaaaaaayyyy!” was not as forceful as in the album or in his previous live performances. It had developed into a more tender and loving high note. Does that reveal something related to his consistent lyric change of “He would have answered…” to “He has answered..” I really do wonder. I also think that he was able to focus on giving it a more romantic feel because he did not accompany himself on the piano, from what I’ve gathered as info that at Ann Arbor he only accompanied himself on the piano in A Thousand Miles.

The Riddle at Ann Arbor. Now this is a song that I’ve never heard before, and it is so refreshing to hear David sing story-telling songs with heart-warming wit and feel-good wisdom. These are the types of songs that fit his personality perfectly. However, I noticed that accompanying himself on the piano makes him a bit distracted from singing it in the best way he can. There are times when he sings a few inches away from the mic because he needs to see his fingers on the piano, then his voice sounds drowned out by the drumbeat. But the times when his voice was clear, I was amazed by how crisply resonant his natural vibrato sounded during the whole song. I also loved his reaction during the pre-banter when someone shouted “You!” as he was talking about what the song was about, “why we are here…” When laughter erupted in the audience, he innocently asked , “what happened?” Then the same thing occurred in Bakersfield, but he just smiled , chuckled and said, “so here we go…” So darn charming.

O Holy Night, Silent Night & What Child Is This at SLC, 2nd Night. I consider these three songs as the most powerful traditional Christmas songs in the album, and David has made them come to even more brilliant life in his live performances, most notably in his homestate city. It must be his connection to family present during the concert and to the roots of his faith which contributed to the undeniable emotional energy that permeated the whole performance. It is clearly his pride and joy to showcase the Utah-based talents who worked with him on the Christmas album. And I applaud them for a job fantastically well done.

These five (with the 3-way tie at #5) performances do not in any way diminish David’s other song renditions. They just stood out to me as performances with a distinct clarity of purpose that was successfully conveyed. At a close sixth, David’s Ave Maria consistently moves me to tears. It is a difficult song to sing, but David delivers it with such passion and outpouring of emotion that you forget he hurried or struggled with some long notes. I loved how he hummed during the choir part at Ann Arbor because there was no children’s choir to back him. You can tell by his humming how immersed he is in song. David enjoying his live performance of his album favorite Pat-A-Pan, his restrained stomping to the beat with some intense belting in Riu Riu Chiu, the touching duet with his mom Lupe in HYAMLC on the first night in SLC, are little highlights in themselves.

I still dearly hope that someone thought of taping the Ann Arbor concert. Otherwise, why would Radio Disney do the tie-up? I’m doubtful if it is only for the song A Merry Christmas To Me, a very Disney-sounding track. The purely audio vids by emilyluvsarchie really tickle the imagination, with the rich sound of the orchestra against David’s magnificent vocals. Although I couldn’t identify the intro to Crush and felt the beginning of the song could have been better arranged, the latter part of the song picked up strength big time. David was equally strong in his vocals, and the orchestral arrangement reminded me of a time years ago when the Boston Symphony orchestra came out with an album called Boston Goes Pop. The orchestra played pop songs with a classical arrangement. They even had a rock album! I believe that given the right arrangement, Zero Gravity and Crush have the potential to sound great with an orchestra.

I also loved the story about how the Ann Arbor conductor was blown away by David’s OHN encore that he was distracted from conducting and felt compelled to watch David briefly. And for a classical conductor to acknowledge that the musical arrangements of David’s CFTH songs are amazing is very noteworthy and speaks well of the album’s superb quality.

I have another dream for David: On his Christmas tour next year, I wish he would perform with the symphonic orchestra of every key city in the US.

And then in Manila (wink). No pre-recorded instrumentals please.

Gosh, JR, that was soooo A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E!
I had to repeat that banter several times. And every time I let out a hearty laugh! He is so darn —- gaaaaaahhh!!! I could just squeesh him ….!

marlie,

Okay, I found the YT vid when I clicked HOME on his blog page. How silly of me not to think of it.

I’ll stop spamming now. This is what happens when I don’t have wifi for days. Making up for lost time, hehe.

Gotta go to sleep and wake up early for work. Ciao for now!