Words by By Montague Gammon III
Photo by Jeff Moore
The jam-packed opening night Chartway Arena-Virginia Arts Festival concert called “Laufey: A Night at the Symphony with Virginia Symphony Orchestra,” provided this opera and classical music (and classic rock and ‘60s folk) fan with some revelations.
There’s many a pop or rock star who does not show her level of musicianship.
Laufey actually articulates her lyrics. She does not keep her eyes fixed on her left hand when she accompanies herself on guitar; she actually knows how to play the instrument, and she’s a competent cellist and piano player as well.
Of course she has a good voice, which she joins with some flair for writing lyrics. Unsurprisingly, giver her age of 26 last April and the median age range of her fan base: teens, tweens and twenties (biased it seems toward women), those lyrics are primarily about romance.
“I want a love like I’ve seen in the movies / That’s why I’ll never fall in love,” are the lines that stick in my memory. Even though I could predict the second line once I had heard the first, they still make a trenchant, if fleeting, comment on how mass media fuels fantasies of idealized relationships.
Despite the title of her two back-to-back evening concerts, it really was not the Symphony with Laufey; it was Laufey with some heavily amped instrumentalists in white shirts sitting behind her, serious musicians who just happened to be from our Symphony. It could be my aging ears, but I did think that they were over-amped to the point of obscuring some of what she sang.
The audience reaction after every song was invariably high volume and high pitched screaming, often followed by one or more individuals wailing their love for her, or hollering out a song request, as if her program was not set in advance.
And a rhythmic waving of cell phone flashlights has replace the vastly less safe waving of lighted matches that was common in old rock concerts, though rumor has it that those live flames could to double duty way back when.
I’m glad I got the chance to go, and I do plan to look up some of her songs on YouTube.
Laufey: A Night at the Concert
Virginia Arts Festival and Chartway Arena
July 30 and 31