I have been to about 4 virtual shows the past 2 years. Judy Collins (my favourite popular singer twice.) Also saw Tom Paxton and various other people he has been working with since 2018 – two shows.

in this post I will briefly review them all. Also the Auckland Choral show I saw recently.

The first show from Collins was a revisit of her 1964 Judy Collins Concert live at the town hall in NYC. The show has been released as a live album as was the original. It is very faithful to the 1964 recording in 2020. Collins is in good voice and has a great band behind her.

Collins second show with Ari Hest was a leonard Cohen tribute. It opened with a harpist singing 60’s songs who was very good and quirky. Working with the same band who played on her latest album, Spellbound, Collins strutted her stuff. she was not as vibrant as the town hall show but still has her pipes and played the piano with tenderness on Joan of arc and Song of Bernadette. .

Tom Paxton and the don Juans have been touring together a lot lately. I think their album is much better than there live show. Tom can still churn out a great song and backed by keyboards and other stuff of the multi-instrumentalists don Juans he sounded pretty good.

The second Paxton show was with Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer. Fink and Paxton have written some great new songs during the pandemic over zoom and they performed them all live. One of them is still in my head and they have also penned a Pete Seeger tribute song which has been released as a single. More info is here on FaceBook. It was a great night with lots of toe-tappers and even some topical songs.

And the other night Auckland Choral did a live, in-person show at Holy Trinity cathedral here in Auckland. It was invegorating and great to go to. The programme was Mendelssohn, Brahms and Schubert Mass in G. The latter was very interesting. The first half of short songs was also particularly challenging for the soprano, Joanna Foot. Nonetheless, a great show enthusiastically received by a masked audience.