Roberta Flack in Auckland

Last night we went with two old friends to see Roberta Flack in concert at the Civic Theatre. It was a fun evening and everyone attending—including a noticeable GLBT segment—seemed to enjoy the experience.

I won’t do a real review because I’m not particularly good at it. When I go to a concert, I can’t remember the names of musicians and backing singers (if I can even understand them when introduced), and I can never seem to remember the order of songs. The New Zealand Herald’s review (meh…) is here.

Roberta appeared here after stops in Australia and on her way to Wellington and Christchurch. It’s the first time she’s been in New Zealand in more than 28 years; the last time she was here she learned of the death of John Lennon and that her own mother was dying. This was a much happier time.

At 72 years old, she still has the voice to take on the songs that made her famous. She also performed for the better part of two hours, including playing piano as she sang.

Back home, she’s big on artists controlling the rights to their own work, and she also works to train people in music. That education work is part of why she had the audience sing lines on a few of her old hits—that, and they’d be singing along, anyway. On her own, she was hauntingly beautiful singing “Jesse”, and her other, perhaps less well-known songs didn’t disappoint. Her backing singers and band were excellent, though the sound system sometimes wasn’t. It happens.

We didn’t see the opening act because a delay at the restaurant where we had dinner made us late (they were apologetic and gave vouchers; we weren’t angry). The Civic has flat panel TVs in the lobby area that showed the opening act and I’m afraid I didn’t think we missed anything. The reason we were there was to see Roberta, anyway, so the rest didn’t matter.

It was a fun—though late—night for us all.