With the grievances of summer\u2019s sickly heat almost gone, our favorite folk artists make their way onto our fall playlists. After all, what is autumn without tracks such as \u201cAmsterdam\u201d?<\/p>\n
The track is one of many hits that indie folk musician Gregory Alan Isakov performed live with the San Francisco Symphony on Sept. 15 at Davies Symphony Hall. Isakov has a long reputation of joining forces with symphonies, having even released an album with the Colorado Symphony in 2016.<\/p>\n
Isakov performed with his tight-knit touring band alongside the strings section of the symphony. His songs are especially resounding in their lonesome, wistful quality that mixes folk\u2019s rawness with rock\u2019s vim. This quality was not lost in the instrumental backdrop that night, but was instead explored to a deeper effect, capturing every audience member regardless of their familiarity with his discography.<\/p>\n
The band and symphony opened with a lengthened instrumental introduction to \u201cBefore the Sun\u201d from the 2023 album Appaloosa Bones. The track\u2019s signature banjo was accompanied by the symphony\u2019s strings, sustaining a subtle harmony and sweeping the audience into a lush sonic landscape reminiscent of endless fields at sunset. Jeb Bows\u2019 violin flooded the stage, with romantic trills ornamenting the atmosphere and setting the lyrical tone for the night before Isakov\u2019s imagistic lyrics came in: \u201cFifty-five mile signs \/ Thunder crack and lightning \/ While something else inside \/ Shines like the Fourth of July.\u201d<\/p>\n
The light design was a dual-hued approach, spotlighting the members of the band in one tone and the symphony in another. With every song, a hue of red or violet would wash over the audience, visually embodying the emotion-drenched atmosphere. Wearing his signature cowboy hat and outlined by the stage\u2019s red shades, Isakov\u2019s face was obscured by the shadows.<\/p>\n
The floating melody of \u201cAmsterdam\u201d was accented by the strings section every other beat, with the xylophone as a brilliant addition to the acoustics. Even in his mumbly country voice, Isakov\u2019s baritone vocals swept the hall with a more resonant quality than any of his recordings have captured, sometimes slipping into emotional voice breaks.<\/p>\n
Throughout the night, the band\u2019s performance dynamic shone through, allowing it to move as a unit, completely harmonious with its vocalizations. The six members kept physically in-touch with their music, jumping, crouching and kicking to the rhythm of their songs, even as they gripped their instruments tightly. Isakov and Bows often huddled together, taking cues from one another during lengthy instrumental breaks.<\/p>\n
As the band began \u201cSan Luis,\u201d Max Barcelow\u2019s drumbeat resonated through the orchestral floor before the keys took over. The song\u2019s bittersweet composition complemented Isakov\u2019s haunting lyrics, \u201cI\u2019m a ghost of you, you\u2019re a ghost of me.\u201d The symphony was a backdrop, the strings in a delicate pizzicato or sustaining a long note as a sea for the lead instruments to swim in, all before a moment of silence when Isakov sang solo.<\/p>\n
In \u201cThis Northern Empty Hemisphere,\u201d Bows\u2019s violin took flight, dominating the stage with a soaring solo that shimmered with vibrato. As the bass joined, an almost baroque tone succeeded before shifting to an electric atmosphere.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote all these songs in my kitchen a long time ago,\u201d Isakov said following a performance of \u201cChemicals.\u201d He looked in awe staring out at the filled tiers of Davies Hall. \u201cI\u2019m always used to being the worst musician when I\u2019m on the stage with these guys,\u201d he joked, grounding the grandiosity of the hall\u2019s atmosphere with some tender self-depricating humor.<\/p>\n
Following the intermission, \u201cSweet Heat Lightning\u201d incorporated the french horn with a warm, noble sound that continued through the night. Alongside textured instruments such as Danny Black\u2019s steel and the symphony\u2019s xylophone, the instrumental palette was rich without being overly performative, simply serving to enrich Isakov\u2019s atmospheric music.<\/p>\n
After tipping his hat to the symphony after a performance of \u201cCaves,\u201d Isakov and his band came back for an encore consisting of \u201cFeed Your Horses\u201d and \u201cSaint Valentine.\u201d Huddled around a mic, the band brought an intimate close to the night, as one might feel singing around a campfire. The ending brought the performance closer to the band\u2019s folk roots, bonding a collective human experience like memories being passed down through generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the grievances of summer\u2019s sickly heat almost gone, our favorite folk artists make their way onto our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[83056,185650,185649,25112,185648,31160,185647,185652,185651,101,103,102,31162,104,106,105,185653],"class_list":["post-472075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-amsterdam","tag-appaloosa-bones","tag-before-the-sun","tag-chemicals","tag-colorado-symphony","tag-davies-symphony-hall","tag-gregory-alan-isakov","tag-jeb-bows","tag-max-barcelow","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-san-francisco-symphony","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-sweet-heat-lightning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}