The Indigo Girls and the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra at Durham Performing Arts Center — Durham, NC — 4/15/2015
This concert review originally appeared on Degenrefy.com
The Indigo Girls [★★★★★] have been performing together for almost 30 years. Amy Ray and Emily Sailers have earned critical acclaim for their albums and their solo work. However, they earned an enormous amount of attention and praise for their work with orchestras throughout the country. We were lucky to get the opportunity to see Amy and Emily perform arrangements of some of their work with help from North Carolina’s Symphony Orchestra at The Durham Performing Arts Center along with several hundred eager Indigo Girls fans.
The members of the orchestra took their respective places, and soon after Amy and Emily strode out on stage to a very warm welcome from DPAC. The duo played through a few songs, and stopped to dedicate “Power of Two” to a couple in attendance. Most of the audience joined in for a massive serenade.
During the course of the evening, you could tell that even Amy and Emily were taken aback by the power and talent of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, but they were in good company, because so was the audience. It’s one thing to experience The Indigo Girls live, because their vocal harmonies are unparalleled after decades of singing and composing together. The intricacy of their acoustic guitar work has the ability to mesmerize. But when you couple their skills with a wall of orchestral sound, it makes for an extremely powerful, moving performance.
The Indigo Girls and the orchestra went on to cover plenty of ground including, “Damo,” “Able to Sing,” and “Galileo” before the intermission, much to the delight of the crowd. After the intermission, when everyone mellowed out, Amy and Emily returned to the stage and went on to play “Fugitive,” “Mystery,” and a truly moving rendition of “Ghost.”
When The Indigo girls and the orchestra launched into “Go” from Come On Now Social, we got to feel the full power of of the orchestra. Not only was the arrangement brilliant both in design and execution, but Amy Ray rocked out riding on the waves of the music, and this was easily the high point of the night.
Even though there were Indigo Girls fans of all ages present at DPAC, the one song that can unite everyone in the room is “Closer to Fine.” The North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, Amy Ray, and Emily sailers closed out an amazing set with this song, brought the entire room to their feet, and prompted a massive singalong. Experiencing the music of the Indigo Girls with orchestral precision and power takes the music and the audience experience to a brand new level.
