Opening what we hope will be a long series of concerts in the Utah Valley
area, Lisa Moscatiello performed at two intimate but well-attended house
concerts this past week. Lisa has long been one of my favorite performers
ever since I first saw her front the now defunct New St. George in
Washington, DC. Her voice simply blows away nearly every female vocalist
I've ever heard.
One of Lisa's main strengths is her ability to perform a diverse collection
of material--songs from folks like Tom Waits and John Hiatt to Janis Ian
and Lucinda Williams--and make them her own original performances. Lisa
continued this tradition by wrapping her voice around songs by the likes of
the Eurithmics and Morrisey and several traditional Scottish and Celtic
songs. But the songs never sounded disjointed or out of place. Lisa has a
way of making it all blend together beautifully.
Lisa has also become a songwriter in her own right. She performed several
original compositions that stack up with the best of the best. Her song
"Fugitive" which she co-wrote with Techno Musician Bev Stanton describes
the point of view of a murderer. "Bed By the Window" is haunting and
poignant. "Angry Town" details the pain of moving to a large alienating
city. But the song that brought the house down was her "Second Avenue."
This, I believe, will be the song that takes Lisa to the big time. It is a
well-crafted song about the wistfulness of lost love, but it is also so
catchy that I'm still humming it around the house after only hearing it
twice.
This was Lisa's first trip west, and I think the audience and the mountains
will bring her back. I know Lisa will bring the audience back.
Like I say, we are hoping this is only the beginning of many concerts to
follow, so any of you musicians who are going to be in the area let us know
and we'll see if we can set something up. We're right on your way whether
you're going from East to West or from West to East, and midweek
performances are our specialty.
Finally, I have a question: I remember seeing a reference on the list to a
book about how to do house concerts sometime ago. Does anyone have info on
this? We certainly want to do this by the book.
Thanks,
Boyd
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Boyd Petersen * Adjunct Faculty
515 South 900 East * Depts of English & Humanities
Provo, UT 84606 * Utah Valley State College
(801) 375-4072 * 4petersbo@uvsc.edu
bpetersn@burgoyne.com *
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