This unofficial site features his current and recent events and tours
Review of Tony Hadley and the Barcelona Jazz Orchestra at
48è Festival de Pollença - Mallorca - 11th July 2009
I'd decided that this year for my holiday that I didn't want to do anything too strenuous, and that a week in the sunshine would do me fine, as for dates I had chosen were between the time that my daughter's 6th form college broke up at the end of June and when the schools break up around 20th July, so when Gema told me about this show I looked into going, but without going to a further away from home airport I couldn't get a flight that would enable me to fly in on the Saturday and go home on the Sunday so I decided to make this our family holiday and booked a hotel for the week.
I stayed in Puerto Pollença on the coast, about 5 km away from the old town of Pollença, but earlier in the week I decided to go to Pollença and have a look round and see where the 17th century Santa Domingo Cloisters where the show was being held and also to walk up the 365 stone steps up to the Calvario. It is a lovely old town and well worth a visit.
The time between my arrival on Tuesday and Saturday flew by and it was time to get ready for the show, I walked along the Puerto Pollença sea front and met Gema at her hotel and she drove us to the show, we picked up our front row tickets and settled down for the excellent show to begin. Whilst we had been waiting in the queue somebody connected with the show came by with a set list which I managed to get a sneaky look at, but as I'd seen Tony with the Barcelona Jazz Orchestra three times before, the set list wasn't much of a surprise.
There had been long queues of people waiting to get in and I was surprised that everyone was in and had taken their seats just after the 10 pm start time, there were also people sitting along the sides of the cloisters. It was an outdoor venue but enclosed on four sides with a canopy over the stage.
The show started with just the Barcelona Jazz Orchestra on stage and they did two numbers, then it was time for Tony to come on and start with 'The Mood I'm In'. He explained to the audience that he would have liked to have translated what he said into Spanish but that his Spanish was limited. He got the audience to indicate if they were British and I'd say that about one third of them were. The evening was warm, it seemed rather late for the show to be starting at 10 pm, but I suppose that is why, I was glad that I'd had a siesta that afternoon.
Tony mentioned that when on holiday in the region a few years ago he'd seen a flamenco act on that very same stage, but it was hotter on stage than it was in the audience. He mentioned that he had been in rehearsals and recording for the new Spandau Ballet CD, but that he had taken a short break for the concert and a few days holiday.
The cloisters provided excellent acoustics, which for a 17th century building was a bit surprising. The orchestra were very good and Tony's singing was very good. The time went really quickly even though he had sung 13 song, he said goodnight and buneos noches to the audience and went off stage, but because we had seen the set list we knew there would be more.
Tony came back on stage and spoke to the orchestra and said something like 'two more' and started into the encore of 'That's life' after this a lot of people stood up for 'Lets stick together', after this Tony started to go off stage but the orchestra started playing 'Its not unusual' and Tony came back to sing it.
Gema had an arrangement to sell Tony's CDs from her shop Mandolin Music and these were snapped up by people who had enjoyed the concert. The photos of this show aren't as good as I would have liked, but the festival stipulated no photography, I took this to mean no flash photography.
After the show we had a quick chat with Tony and then it was back to the resort to continue my holiday.
Denise 12/7/09