The Sing-Off Live Tour at the Grand Opera

Last night, seven of us (us and the neighbors) went down to Wilmington for dinner and a concert: the Sing-Off Live Tour. The Sing-Off is a competition singing TV show featuring entirely a cappella groups. It has short "seasons" every now and then that are more like a miniseries (or in the case of this year, a single long episode). Every sound they make (and the percussion and other sounds are amazing) are entirely done with voice. This is one of the few shows that everyone in the family likes, so going to see the show seemed like a natural choice. We like any kind of live music, this would be something different, and we try to expose the kids to as much as possible...

In addition to a brief appearance by a collegiate group from Vanderbilt University, the bulk of the show was made up of approximately half-hour sets by The ExChange (from this year's single episode season 5), VoicePlay (from season 4) and Street Corner Symphony (from season 2). The concert totaled 2 hours across the various groups, and was interspersed with a bunch of mix-and-match combined numbers. Each of the three main groups had 5 or 6 members, and generated an amazing amount of sound.

All of the groups were terrific, and we all loved the show, including the kids. The kids liked the fact that many of the songs were arrangements of pop tunes that they knew. The vocals were terrific, they had good stage presence, and there was a good amount of humor and crowd interaction mixed in between the actual songs. Especially hilarious was the mixed number where the "percussionists" from each group got together on stage to play a phantom game of ping pong. Hilarious and impressive stuff...

We bought a CD from each group on the way out of the theater.

They said this was 10 dates into a 60 date tour, and anyone who likes this kind of thing would do well to see them if they come to a venue near you.