Thomas Bergersen is one of my favorite composers. His orchestral music is dynamic and energetic and it evokes emotion and power. If it is possible to wear out MP3's, I would have done it with his various albums.

Illusions - Thomas Bergersen
Archangel - Two Steps From Hell
Invincible - Two Steps From Hell
Skyworld - Two Steps From Hell

So last month, June 2013, he had his first concert at the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, CA and I bought a ticket. After I bought the ticket I realized it is a "Two Steps From Hell" concert and not a Thomas Bergersen concert. If you don't know, TSFH is work that is a collaboration with Bergersen and Nick Phoenix. While I like most of the tracks on each of those albums, I like EVERY track from Illusions, Bergersen's solo album. I figured there wouldn't be any Illusions tracks performed. Bummer.

His music would be what's called "World Music", incorporating various influences from many different cultures, and the TSFH music would be targeting movie trailers. If you go to his site you can see the various albums he's written, and the movie trailers that have used his music.

Two Steps From Hell Concert

So I was excited to go see him live in concert. When I was younger I was composing music myself and had a love for conducting as well, so I wanted to see if he would be conducting or playing an instrument. He didn't conduct, but he played the electric violin, synthesizer, piano and some drums. Talented to say the least.

While the music will always be great, the concert fell a little flat for me. Mainly because he had each piece backed up with playback of the piece. That was more distracting sometimes than anything else, and on one piece, it was out of sync with the orchestra a little and that was real distracting.

There were some pieces that had both male and female vocals, and in the concert Nick Phoenix provided the male vocals, but there were no female vocals, and that too was distracting, and disappointing. He mentioned prior to the concert that he wouldn't be making any money on the concert even though some of the tickets were well over $100.00, because of the cost of the concert itself and contracts with the musicians.

But it was real unfortunate that he couldn't have produced the concert a little better to have it a full blown live only (no playback) concert with all the vocalists and everything like a proper concert. Hopefully he learned what it takes to put on a concert and will put on a great one next time.

Leaving the concert hall I was eavesdropping on others as they were commenting on the concert, and the overall reaction I was hearing was similar to the feeling I had, that it was just OK and it was great to see Thomas in person performing on stage, but it would have been so much better if the performance was up to par with the recordings.

This is no way diminishes my love for his work, and I still continue to wear out his albums, and I can't wait to hear what he's got coming next.

And prior to the movie I went to Little Tokyo which was a block from my hotel to have some dinner. I had one of my favorites, authentic Japanese Ramen. Unfortunately my favorite restaurant serving Shabu-Shabu was packed and I didn't have time to wait.

Chashu Ramen

Turkey balls

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