Lesher Center for the Arts presents Sarah McKenzie
Rudney Plaza
Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek, CA 94596-4299 USA
7:30 PM, Friday, August 20, 2021

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[7:34 PM] {Introduction by Mayor Kevin Wilk; announcements from LCA Executive Director Peggy White}

1. [7:39 PM] I Fell in Love with You
2. [7:45 PM] Corcovado
3. [7:51 PM] I Wish You Love
4. [7:58 PM] Day In, Day Out
5. [8:08 PM] De Nada
   [8:16 PM] {Michel Legrand story}
6. [8:18 PM] the Secret of My Heart
7. [8:25 PM] One Jealous Moon
8. [8:34 PM] Embraceable You
9. [8:39 PM] Blue Ronda a la Turk
10. [8:49 PM] Schneller!
    [8:58 PM] {Thanks! Goodnight! (no encore)}

• Donald Edwards: drums;
• Jon Hamar: contrabass;
• Ralph Moore: tenor saxophone;
• Sarah McKenzie: piano, vox;
• John Storie: guitar.

7/23/21: show moved outdoors from Margaret Lesher Theatre to Rudney Plaza, presumably due to COVID-19 safety concerns, although that's not mentioned in the email or publicity announcement.

8/20/21: and today it's friggin' smokey: AQI over 100 = bad news!! Yet not bad enough to cancel the gig: the show must go on!

After a couple of snafus getting out of the house, we make our way east to Walnut Creek, park, then walk a block or so over to the plaza. We're about ten minutes early, but the crowd seems sparse to me: the seats are maybe 30% full? We find ours, then I go find the house manager to inquire about the empty seats: why not move up, right? Her printout shows that the front is pretty much sold out: obviously this is not a useful metric right now: I can see that more than half of those seats are empty. Best open seats on her map are one row in front of us, but a bit over to house right, and after comparing views, Ting votes to stick with our center seats. I like the notion of staying centered, but there's another couple right next to us, and about 8 seats open to the left, so open a gap by sitting down on the outside of Ting, slightly off-center by seat-count, but on-center in terms of looking at the band.

The show starts with a few minutes of speeches, and many of the front seats fill in, but by some miracle, I'm left with a “corridor view” of empty seats about 2-3 seats wide going straight up to the front-left, so I can see the sax, guitar and drums (Ralph, John, and Donald) perfectly, even though all three are seated like us.

Of course the contrabass player, Jon, is standing up. He's slightly obscured by folks in front of me, but I can see his head and left hand well enough. Worst for me is a view of Sarah at the piano. The audience is definitely stacked up on the piano side, and because Sarah's at ground level, I can only see the top of her head, except when folks shift this way and that just right. So every now and then I get a view of her, mostly when she's turned to face the audience, introducing a song, and the rest of the time I see the back of her head while she plays. Oh well. At least the sound at my seat is A+ considering the circumstances.

Whoa! This section is incomplete for now, sorry!

After the show we check in with our pal Carmen, ? working as stage manager tonight?, and he points out the layer of ash on the piano – “It was clean when we wheeled it out here around 4 PM.” Ack!

Program Notes

Big thanks to Ting for the photo gallery!

Whoa! This section is incomplete for now, sorry!

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2021 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2021 event list! ☸ On to the next event!