George Thorogood
George Thorogood, you could say, was drenched to the bone at the Birchmere on Sunday. In a set as loud, and before a crowd as big, as any the venue has hosted, a sweaty Thorogood delivered all the roots-rock drinking songs that fans came to hear.
Even at the peak of his stardom two decades ago, Thorogood, who turns 54 this month, relied on retro rock; rare is the Thorogood lick that wasn't copped from "Johnny B. Goode." But while his oeuvre never required any special guitar technique, an incredible amount of verve was necessary. A youthful amount of verve, really, and for about 80 minutes, Thorogood showed he's still got it.
Early in the show, as he ripped through pretty much every liquor brand name on the 1982 smash "I Drink Alone," Thorogood realized he wouldn't be singing alone. Most of the audience knew every word of every song, and fans full of the beverages listed in the lyrics shouted them out at full volume. As he started talking his way through "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" -- just after taking a break to comb his hair -- Thorogood addressed the volume of the vocals coming back at him from the packed crowd: "I take it some of you people have heard this story before," he said. "Well, you're going to hear it again!"
Other familiar nuggets delivered by Thorogood and his backing quartet, the Destroyers, included "Who Do You Love?," "Night Time" and the slide-guitar romp "Gear Jammer." Every chord and stage move from the dripping Thorogood -- even the ill-advised pelvic thrusts -- incited fist-pumping adulation. By the time he got around to his most familiar tune, "Bad to the Bone," the masses huddled at the front of the stage were as drenched as Thorogood, and smiling.
-- Dave McKenna
Chanticleer
Of the 12 men who collectively perform as Chanticleer, five are accomplished countertenors who can sing not only persuasively but beautifully in the soprano and alto range. For its programs, therefore, the group is able to tap into both the wonderful repertoire for male voices and the much larger one for mixed voices, and its Christmas concert at the George Mason Center for the Arts on Friday offered some of both.
The program was about evenly split among music of the 15th and 16th centuries, selections of some of the 20th century's finest choral writing, and traditional carols and spirituals. The finest performances came in both the earliest and most recent pieces, the set of three anonymous 15th-century English carols and the gorgeous short works by Part, Biebl and Britten.
The "Chanticleer sound" is most characterized by straight, vibrato-less singing and pitches so absolutely locked in that overtones become part of the harmonic mix. This is not an ensemble that leans soulfully into phrases. Its counterpoint is wonderfully clear but quite dry so that, while the group's readings of Renaissance motets by de Monte, Mouton and Victoria were interesting, it did not evoke the emotional response that those composers were playing to.
Bieble's popular "Ave Maria" setting, Cui's "Magnificat" and Britten's "A Hymn to the Virgin," however, glowed in the light of Chanticleer's quiet and comforting sonorities, and the early carols danced, their rhythmic energy made almost palpable by the easy weightlessness of the singing.
Solos scattered throughout the program were splendidly handled by the various countertenors and by one amazing basso profundo who intoned the phrase-openings of one of the spirituals with magical solemnity.
-- Joan Reinthaler
Suspicious Cheese Lords
The Suspicious Cheese Lords are a men's chamber chorus founded in 1996 that's beginning to make a name for itself in this area -- for its singing as much as its odd appellation. And in a well-researched concert of mostly Renaissance music at the Franciscan Monastery in Northeast Washington on Sunday, they showed off the sort of blend accomplished only by careful listening.
The monastery's church is a very echoey space, so the pieces with simplest textures sounded best. The opening unison verses of Genet's "Conditor Alme Siderum" were warmly opulent, and the lines of one of Josquin's lovely and simple "Ave Maria" settings (transposed down to depths Josquin rarely plumbed) spoke gently and clearly, as did the Georgian hymn "Shen Khar Venakhi."
Other pieces on the program had to fight the acoustics and, for the most part, the acoustics won, softening the rhythmic edges of the two villancicos and scrambling the intricacies of complicated antiphonal counterpoint.
The guest artist, organist Haig Mardirosian, played several sets of well-articulated, short and somewhat sentimental 19th- and 20th-century pieces and gave a nicely voiced reading of the Bach "Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland."
And the ensemble's unforgettable name? It's a clever bastardization of a motet by Thomas Tallis, "Suscipe Quaeso, Domine" (think "queso," as in cheese).
-- Joan Reinthaler
