An Evening With Katherine Jenkins at The Sage, Gateshead

An Evening With Katherine Jenkins

The Sage, Gateshead

30.4.2019

Back to The Sage for the last gig of a busy April - and a sharp change of genre.

This tour is to support the release of the new Guiding Light album and features the London Concert Orchestra, conducted by Anthony Inglis.

Support came in the form of AJ Brown, who warmed up the audience with a pleasant set of piano-based songs. There was no interval between AJ leaving the stage and the large orchestra taking their places and they picked up the pace to build up to Katherine's own appearance. Entering stage left, with a extraordinary red dress trailing almost it's body length again, the entrance was impressive indeed as she launched into Homeward Bound - the opening song of Guiding Light.

The evening's repertoire covered the various aspects of Katherine's career, with operatic material sharing the limelight with further cuts from the new album, the best of which was probably Jealous of the Angels.

.

Katherine Jenkins has a remarkably powerful, emotive voice and she looks sensational. The magnificent dresses were changed three times over the course of the evening (red-blue-pink-yellow).

There were a couple of curious aspects to the evening. The first half of Katherine's show lasted just a shade over half an hour and the second was an hour. The is fine, but for significant portions of both halves she left the stage to change and the orchestra carried the show without her. The orchestra was magnificent, of course, but to have the star of the show absent for so long in what was already going to be a relatively short show was a mistake.

The second half also brought a series of questions from the audience, which had been written down on cards during the interval. The problem with this is that it went on for far too long and detracted from the show. Frankly, there are only so many times we can applaud shout-outs for people's birthdays and the like.

.

The show closed at 10.00 p.m. with a rousing sing-along encore of We Are the Champions.

What we got, was fantastic and moving - but we needed more.