WAMC Performing Arts Studio
News and Reviews
| With a heavenly vibe, Maura O'Connell connects By David Singer (First published in the Daily Gazette of Schenectady, NY: Sunday, March 19, 2006) It was the night after St. Patty's Day - Saturday night - but at WAMC's Linda Norris Auditorium singer Maura O'Connell celebrated the holiday one extra night with the sold-out crowd. O'Connell turned regular songs - she doesn't write - into dramatic vignettes that told full stories. After opening with "To Be the One" and following with "Trip Around the Sun," she sang "Down by the Sally Gardens," taking us on a trip that W.B. Yeats probably took when he originally wrote it. O'Connell cares about the song first. More than singing what she feels or wants, she delivers just what the song needs. During "Blue Train," she sang between the two instruments on stage with her * acoustic guitar and electric bass. But for most of the night she hovered above her rhythm section. Born and raised in Ireland, she likened the Iraq situation to the conflicts in Belfast, blaming ignorance as the fuel for the wars. She sang "Walls," referring to the walls people put up that lead to ignorance. O'Connell is not cool nor does she try to be. She jokes and moves like your fun aunt. With endearment she reprimanded the audience - to their delight - for clapping the beat. "Don't do it again," she said. If nothing else, she picks great tunes to sing. Or maybe she makes them great, like the song "Spinning Wheel" (not the Blood Sweat and Tears version). Before she sang "Walls," she talked about the need to tear them down between cultures and people of all ages. She seemed compelled to say that the first line of the "Hold On" song reminded her of this country's president: "I spoke but it came out crooked and broke." Later in the song she looked sky-high and shot out the wonderful line, "I just want everything right." Other tunes she played included "Love You In the Middle" and "Phoenix Falling," about the mentally ill. She called "Time to Learn" the "saddest song she ever recorded," about dealing with the death of a close person. She said songs like these help her heal. "It takes time to learn when someone's gone for good." O'Connell fancies herself a folk singer, she said, but sometimes not, and she definitely doesn't sing country tunes, though she lives in Nashville. O'Connell's Irish accent falls away when she sings her beautiful tunes, which are probably all of them. She closed with the song "Blessing," a soulful tune that she should take to heaven with her the way she sang it. For encores she sang an amazing "Danny Boy" and ended with Van Morrison's "Crazy Love." She gave a wonderful show. You get the feeling that if she told the audience to come back tomorrow, she'd fill the auditorium again. Back to News and Reviews |
| Used with permission of the Schenectady Daily Gazette. Re-use rights may not be assigned to a third party without prior written permission from the Daily Gazette. |