Brian May & Kerry Ellis: The Candlelight Concerts Live at Montreux Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Brian May & Kerry Ellis: The Candlelight Concerts Live at Montreux Blu-ray Movie Review

Easy does it.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 1, 2014

Easy listening music gets a bum rap, in my not so humble opinion. So-called “mood music” became a staple on fifties’ turntables when tired executives wended their way home and were met by their wives (wearing aproned skirts and pearls, of course) with a cold martini in hand. Relaxing over the evening paper while soothing music played in the background became something of a national tradition, and because these albums were frequently thought of as “wallpaper music”, a lot of people never really paid attention to the impeccable arranging craft that was on display in a lot of these easily disparaged but actually quite artful albums. While the big band era provided music that people were meant to dance to, the easy listening era, which stretched roughly from the early fifties to the early seventies, was made for listening, and admittedly not fully concentrated listening at that. This was, after all, background music. But just take a moment to really open your ears to some of the incredible arrangements of masters like Robert Farnon, Percy Faith, Hugo Montenegro and a kaleidoscope of orchestral colors are offered in sometimes ingenious ways. Faith also shepherded many top singers in the nascent pop vocal era which supplanted big band music in the early fifties, and to hear his impeccable backups to icons like Rosemary Clooney, Doris Day or Johnny Mathis is a lesson in taste, skill and understatement. Some younger listeners may feel a lot of these older offerings are a bit on the cheesy side, and they may in fact have a similar reaction to the patently “easy listening” ambience of Brian May and Kerry Ellis: The Candlelight Concerts. There’s absolutely nothing amped up about this performance, which presents Queen’s legendary guitarist with the musical theater chanteuse who had the lead role in the Queen musical We Will Rock You.

This Montreux Festival concert was recorded on July 19, 2013 (which evidently was Brian May’s birthday), as the next to the last appearance in May and Ellis’ Candlelight Tour. While perhaps not technically part of the duo’s Born Free Tour, there’s certainly a number of similarities, including a performance of John Barry and Don Black’s Oscar winning theme song from the film, repeated references to the plight of various wild species, and just for good measure a tip of the hat to audience member Virginia McKenna (as well as a performance of a song McKenna wrote many years ago called Nothing Really Has Changed).

These are all pretty laid back, “unplugged” versions of tunes that span the gamut from Queen standards to some lesser known Freddie Mercury penned numbers to frankly middle of the road (that successor genre to “easy listening”) fare like “The Way We Were”. Ellis sings with a clear, well articulated voice that belies her musical theater leanings while also delving more liberally into a pop technique. May does some very nice, if understated, work here, adding little dollops of color and unusual chord substitutions, while also paying homage to heroes like George Harrison by duplicating the guitar solo on “Something”.

This is the kind of music that more cynical types will no doubt dismiss as useless drivel, and yet there’s such feeling and warmth in these performances that maybe a few of the less curmudgeonly will accept the fact that music can actually be a relaxing, even healing, art at times. While it’s a bit ironic to see Brian May, who after all helped establish arena rock spectaculars during his Queen era, attempt something so scaled down (no pun intended) and intimate, it’s also a sign that real live grown ups can perform subtler, less in your face, versions of classic tunes without shame or the need to apologize.

The Montreux concert features the following songs:

• 1. I Who Have Nothing
• 2. Dust In The Wind
• 3. Born Free
• 4. Somebody To Love
• 5. Nothing Really Has Changed
• 6. Life Is Real
• 7. The Way We Were
• 8. '39
• 9. Something
• 10. Last Horizon
• 11. Love Of My Life
• 12. The Kissing Me Song
• 13. Tie Your Mother Down
• 14. We Will Rock You
• 15. No One But You (Only the Good Die Young)
• 16. Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Brian May & Kerry Ellis: The Candlelight Concerts Live at Montreux Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Brian May and Kerry Ellis: The Candlelight Concerts is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eagle Vision (an imprint of Eagle Rock Entertainment) with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. This 2013 HD taping looks incredibly sharp and well detailed on Blu-ray, with excellent contrast, nicely reproduced color and some great fine detail in the many extreme close-ups. Due to the often quite dim stage lighting, there are some minimal issues with murky shadow detail off toward the wings of the stage, but otherwise, this is a great looking presentation, one that offers only the barest minimum of combing artifacts as any significant point of concern.

Brian May & Kerry Ellis: The Candlelight Concerts Live at Montreux Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Perhaps because this concert is so "stripped down" or "unplugged", there's a bit less overt difference between the included LPCM 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 tracks than might otherwise be expected. Both of these provide nice separation between Ellis and May as well as excellent fidelity and superb clarity. The 5.1 track does open things up incrementally, allowing for a bit more obvious ambient hall reverb and (for better or worse) more present crowd noises. Neither track has any issues of any kind to worry about.

Brian May & Kerry Ellis: The Candlelight Concerts Live at Montreux Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Blu-ray disc contains the following supplement:

• Nothing Really Has Changed (1080i; 4:00) is a lovely impromptu performance of a song written by Born Free's Virginia McKenna 30 years ago, done for McKenna, who sits and listens. The setting here is remarkable in and of itself, having been filmed on location at the Shamwari Game Reserve in Eastern Cape, South Africa in March of 2012.

In addition, there's a bonus CD, recorded separately from the concert shown on the Blu-ray, which contains the following tracks:

• 1. Born Free
• 2. I Loved a Butterfly
• 3. I Who Have Nothing
• 4. Dust In The Wind
• 5. The Kissing Me Song
• 6. Nothing Really Has Changed
• 7. Life Is Real
• 8. The Way We Were
• 9. Something
• 10. Love Of My Life
• 11. I'm Not That Girl
• 12. I Can't Be Your Friend
• 13. In the Bleak Midwinter
• 14. Crazy Little Thing Called Love
• 15. No One But You (Only the Good Die Young)

Brian May & Kerry Ellis: The Candlelight Concerts Live at Montreux Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I was the butt of many jokes among my friends as I was growing up, for I've always been weirdly fascinated by the "easy listening" genre. To this day, I go out of my way to collect little known LPs in this idiom, often delighting at the incredible virtuosity of the arrangers and players. (It's important to remember that some future film luminaries like Dick Hyman—who worked on so many of Woody Allen's films—paid their bills for years in the 1960s by working on easy listening records. In Hyman's case, he was a regular player and arranger on just about all of Enoch Light's output in that decade.) This Candlelight Concert is an intentionally quiet, intimate affair, and the good news is May and Ellis, who by now have a long and almost intuitive working relationship with each other, are pure and willing channels for this unadorned pop material. Both video and audio are top rate here, and Brian May and Kerry Ellis: The Candlelight Concerts comes Highly recommended.