Prince’s Intimate New Zealand Debut

One piano. One microphone. A couple dozen candles. One Prince. This concert was Prince in a way most people will never hear. Foregoing his usual performance with the backup band, he instead went solo, creating a more intimate but no less powerful atmosphere. A week later, the evening is still reverberating in my mind.

For many Kiwis, this was not just any Prince concert, but their first Prince concert. In his long career, not once had the famed musician come to this corner of the world. Fans who had always wanted to see him, but never had the chance, were presented with a truly golden opportunity.

Typically when classic rock artists step on stage, you expect a greatest hits catalogue. But Prince demonstrated a much greater creativity. Not content just to go through the motions, he had set a challenge for himself, to prove that he could step out from his jazz pianist father’s shadow.

So did he succeed? Short answer: yes. He made it look easy. There was no escaping the fact that Prince’s music had a strong sensuality about it, sometimes implicit, sometimes not. When the songs were married to that sexiest of instruments, the piano, it felt like the two were made for each other. More than just passionate, the experience was an emotional one.

Perhaps there was a catharsis from the self-imposed challenge of taking the old and making it new; either way Prince’s performance was one of deep feeling conveyed through sound and vision. He started slow and powerful, pulling in the audience, before exploding into the more funky songs, the ones that hum with speed and energy. The whole thing was fluid, flowing from one song into another with almost no pauses. Without the start-and-stop of the typical concert performance, Prince kept his audience engaged at every moment. It felt less like a set than a medley – but that was no bad thing.

More than in any other concert I’ve been to, I felt I was always connected – somehow – to whatever emotion Prince wished to convey, and all of that was done through music. Those lucky enough to catch the concert are not going to forget it any time soon.

© Scoop Media