Fortunately, we found Sioux Falls. There are some great restaurants, with a variety of ethnicities ranging from several different Mediterranean to Ethiopian to Vietnamese to italian and all in between. We have some terrific art galleries, with a vibrant artistic community. Several performing arts centers exist in the community, from community theater to road companies of broadway productions. There is a terrific symphony orchestra that blends pops and traditional symphonic performances.
We are also quite fortunate to have the Jazz and Blues Society. Every July, there is Jazzfest, which is an awesome outdoor concert (over the course of a few days). Some of the top jazz and blues artists from all over the world have played the festival. While it's not quite on the same par as Newport or Montreaux, it's pretty darn close.
During the rest of the year, there is a concert series that brings other superb musicians to the area. Last night the concert series opened with Acoustic Alchemy.
Acoustic Alchemy are a British smooth jazz quintet. Smooth jazz is a fusion of r&b, funk & rock which makes it accessible to those who might not like jazz otherwise. Some of the best known performers are Kenny G and Candy Dulfer, which leads some jazz snobs to deride the genre as background music.
Acoustic Alchemy feature guitars as their main instruments, which may sound odd, but they stretch the limits of them. I took the teen queen as my "date", as she has not had any previous cultural exposure (& I mean none) and she was not happy about going. She likes rap and country as well as teeny bopper pop. In fact, one of her favorite singers, Miranda Lambert was playing at the Arena last night as well, and she originally thought that we were going to see her. On top of it all, the concert series is held at the Orpheum Theatre, which dates back to the turn of the last century. The theater contains 7 Greek revival murals that are painstakingly being restored, as is the rest of the theater to it's art deco glory. Due to it's long history, the Orpheum also has a history of paranormal activity. It is alleged to be haunted by the ghost of Larry. No one knows who Larry is-some say he was a despondent actor who killed himself in the balcony, another story says he was shot by a jealous husband; another story is that he was a construction killed during the building of it. The most common story is that Larry is a stage hand so dedicated to his job, he's been there for nearly hundred years. At our library lecture last week, the author mentioned that the Orpheum was haunted, so teen queen was terrified she was going to come face to face with a ghost. I conveniently left out the fact that Larry haunts the balcony, as that is where we were sitting.
Teen queen's only concert going experience was Lifelight labor day weekend. That is an outdoor festival so concert etiquette is very different. She didn't know the "rules" so I apparently was mean mommy to tell her to hush during the musical pieces and when to clap, etc. I take this stuff for granted as I grew up going to performances in NYC. Little Man knows because I've taken him to our South Dakota equivilents. I just assumed that over the course of time, exposure to these things would have happened at school or something.
Wrong.
Once we settled in, and focused on the performance it got much better. She even saw a correlation between scat singing and rap, so that was exciting. Another piece was reggae infused, and in her excitement she was all "Bob Marley mon!" (I'm teaching her well)
Overall, my two favorite pieces were Ariane and the Game.
Great concert & a lot of fun exposing teen queen to something new. And no, we didn't encounter Larry.
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