During her Thursday night headlining performance, Norah Jones sprinkled out bright, peppy piano notes as the sun fully set beyond the woodsy Blossom Music Center venue. Seated behind her white grand piano, she sang a pitch-perfect verse: Take me back to paradise…
Paradise, on a summer night. I never knew that Blossom could feel like an intimate jazz club until I saw Norah Jones and Mavis Staples play there on Thursday. The pavilion-only concert brought a still-sizable crowd to the venue's rows of seats, and pleasantly removed some of the great stresses and frustrations that can come with, say, a fully sold-out show (lawn included) at Blossom.
On Thursday, there was no train of cars inching along Cuyahoga Falls streets hours before showtime.
No lines to get through security, bag check or the restroom.
No crowd of people pushing and shuffling on a bottlenecked pedestrian bridge at the end of the night.
Blossom felt breezy and easy — comfortable and cozy — a perfect (and unexpected) match for the two talented performances of the night.
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Soul-singing treasure Mavis Staples started the show, one day after her 85th birthday, and was still in a celebratory mood in Cuyahoga Falls. She broke out her heavy vocals for songs like “You’re Not Alone,” and “I Belong to the Band,” along with The Staple Singers’ “City in the Sky” and an inspired cover of Talking Heads’ “Slippery People.”
One legend followed the other: next up, Jones featured plenty of greatness off of her new soul-infused album Visions, released in January, including “Queen of the Sea,” “All This Time” and “Running,” switching between piano, keyboard and guitar.
She also, of course, incorporated the songs that earned her nine Grammys and critical acclaim in the jazz-pop-soul intersections, with “Come Away With Me,” “Sunrise” and “What Am I To You?”
There were no pyrotechnics or over-the-top stage props here. A few colorful banners, a disco ball, and a lightning bug or two that lit up in the air above the crowd were all it took to set the ambiance of one chill evening.
Jones saved her hit song, “Don’t Know Why,” for the encore. A cool breeze drifted over Blossom’s lawn, which hosted just a handful of onlookers; the rest were still in the pavilion. Two audience members linked arms and gracefully spun around one another, on a sidewalk that had enough space for them to twirl and sway to the tunes. Another couple started slow dancing, too — and another — and another — all sharing this moment of this not-too-crowded show.
This, right here: paradise.
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