Genre-busting Solange bids farewell to the Sydney Opera House concert hall with dazzling Witness! show
R&B powerhouse Solange has stunned at the Sydney Opera House, with her acclaimed performance art show, Witness.
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R&B visionary Solange proved to be the perfect artist to deliver the swan song performances in the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall ahead of its $150 million renovation with her opening Witness! shows on Thursday.
The American genre-busting auteur, who wears the varied yet connected hats of composer, filmmaker, choreographer and performance has enjoyed a special relationship with the iconic venue having headlined the 2018 Vivid festival.
Having debuted the Witness! production in Hamburg last September, Solange was scheduled to perform four shows for its Australian premiere in the Concert Hall ahead of its closure.
But she had to cancel the opening two nights on doctor’s orders due to the physical demands of the show.
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The artist suffers an autonomic disorder, sharing her health battles with fans in 2017 when she had to pull out of a New Year’s Eve concert in South Africa.
Solange composed, directed and choreographed this compelling reinvention of songs from her albums A Seat At The Table and When I Get Home, Witness!
And it is indeed a physical show and almost every second of it relies heavily of her voice and movement.
Anyone who witnessed her cameo at sister Beyonce’s Homecoming concert at Coachella and their extraordinary bouncing, thigh-burning squats session on stage is keenly aware Solange is one of the most agile, graceful and strong dancers in the contemporary music arena.
And she busted out those moves regularly during the Witness show.
But the show is less about r&b twerk and more about considered and deliberate expression to compliment the depth of meaning in songs both personal and socially conscious.
Solange debuted a new work called Bridges, introducing it by saying “The last year has brought me a lot of personal transitions.”
She announced on Instagram in November she has split with her husband Alan Ferguson earlier in 2019.
“The next piece is one I wrote in the thick of it when the future was unknown and my foundation had crumbled and I had to pick up the pieces,” she said.
With her accomplished band featuring a brass section, cello and violin, drums and bass and two keyboardist as well as her superb backing vocalists, Solange threw herself into a dramatic, free-form jazz piece which sounds like nothing she has ever done before.
Of course her tribe of true believers appreciated the reinventions of her works but naturally reacted with the bigger cheers when she played her beloved r&b hits including Losing You and Cranes In The Sky.
While the show is tightly choreographed – every gesture, every vocal was imbued with meaning – Solange was also generous in her interactions with her audience, getting down on her haunches to sing and play with the front rows, striding to the wings to show love to those in the stalls and popping up the back to shimmy with those in the choir section.
There really is no other artist like her and we can only hope she will be back to open the Concert Hall with another dazzling piece of musical and dance expression when the renovations are completed.
Solange performs her final Witness! show at the Sydney Opera House on Friday.
Originally published as Genre-busting Solange bids farewell to the Sydney Opera House concert hall with dazzling Witness! show
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