What a LIVE! Show is all about: Full house at PAX!
By Mark Meneses
Walking into PAX on June 2nd was one of the most impressive moments I've ever had at Live!
There was never a stage better suited in Miami for our show than the one under the limelight that day. Outlined with timeless rock memorabilia, incandescent light projections, and an elaborate stage setup, the venue made the audience question, "Are we here for our kids, or is U2 in town?" And yes, I heard someone say that.
Live! concerts had been big before, but never had they been as excited as the one on June 2nd. We expected an exponential crowd with over 50 performers—18 bands. That's what we got. Family, friends, and neighbors were all there—even some ex-students and passersby came to see what the show was about—and when the show began, I wondered where all the people were streaming in. Everything was fully tuned and ready when we opened the show, and it couldn't have gone smoother.
I'm sitting down to write this with all sensation and not enough words. I could write about the music, but it wouldn't do the show justice to talk about such talented kids—young musicians playing at such high skill levels (and such young ages) in a concert review. It wouldn't do anything justice to call this a "review" at all. It wouldn't be fair because we don't put on these shows to be reviewed. I could talk about Michael Taddeo's killer guitar solo, David Lehr's impressive bass lines, or even Max Cohen's adorable rendition of "Jar of Hearts" (nothing written about that performance will do it justice). Those have to be experienced firsthand in an audience. There's nothing to review when you attend a show by a group of Miami's young musicians, ecstatic and thrilled to perform the songs they love. Sagacity is simply unfair.
Instead, I'd like to focus on the general feeling of the show—the "zeitgeist," so to speak—that enveloped the crowd that afternoon; the feelings and emotions passed through there from the stage to the audience back again. As a musician and an advocate of the arts, I think these sensations are the most important thing about our shows. It's nice to look forward to having a showcase at the end of each term, but that's not the reason we do it; it's not a matter of showing off. We do this for parents and the audience, but not nearly as much as we do for the kids on the stage. It is, first and foremost, for them.
That brings me to this article's main point and why I decided to write such a personal piece for this month's Cadence. As soon as the show began, I saw what I'd been seeing for so long but never quite understood (was I too young? Perhaps) what it's like to give breath to something so explosive. Retrospectively, I realized it's impossible to give a proper account of what happens at these concerts. It's a personal discourse that is surreal for these young musicians. You realize that narrating this personal connection you have to these kids and the songs they play is conveyed in something deemed a "review". Everything was much more than that. It was as if it were too good to be true. In memory, it became fiction.
Most impressive was the show's sincerity. As soon as you experience those kids walking out onto the stage, some of them with instruments taller than their bodies, you realize what kind of a place Live! is. It puts people somewhere, and it puts people somewhere together. There's a stigma with after-school programs and art schools that they're just there for kids to have something to do, to wait for parents to get out of work, or to keep the kids off the streets. I'm happy to say Live! never reflected that agenda; sure, we may do those things, but what's great about the arts—and what's reflective on these kids' faces when they walk onstage and plugin—is how much they want to be there. It would be obstructive to call a show like this a recital; there is so much more to what the kids did on June 2nd than just performing.
There was a narrative on the stage from the first to the last song. It was simultaneously a breaching of convention and a slap-on-the-forehead gesture that said, "Of course, how can these kids not perform?"
Even first-time performers gained higher ground at PAX. Kids in private lessons practiced for a few weeks before the show but performed like they were true stage experts. The stage presence reverberated with poise and maturity, from Angelique Rose's Zeppelin cover to Keren Yunger's soulful Valerie rendition—it was obvious these kids knew what they were doing, and they were doing it well. Some of these musicians hadn't ever been on a stage before, and you ask yourself how that could be. And then you realize that it's never going to be a lost dream for these kids to never be musicians and play in front of a crowd and hear applause and cheers. No one at Live! will ever say, "I wish I would have done that," because they did.
