Andrew Bird, Amadou & Mariam enchanted fans at Meijer Gardens on Friday with their complex-but-accessible double billing of musical intrigue. The review and photos.
Manifesting Magic: Andrew Bird on stage Friday night. (Photo/Anthony Norkus)
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Creative polymath Andrew Bird is no stranger to the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park amphitheater, where he returned Friday evening for a nearly full house.
But in spite of Bird’s familiarity with the venue (prompting the Grammy-nominated singer/multi-instrumentalist to joke that he felt like the “house band”), his return to Meijer Gardens’ popular summer concert series was anything but predictable.
With his indie-folk catalog inching toward 20 studio albums, the Illinois-born artist has a wide range of high-quality material from which to draw, not to mention a jazz-ish tendency to never perform a song exactly the same way twice.
On the topic of improvisational musical types, Bird and his two talented accompanists kicked off their 95-minute set with a few numbers from Bird’s newest effort, “Sunday Morning Put-On,” an album of jazz covers, as performed by the Andrew Bird Trio.
Amadou & Mariam (Photo/Anthony Norkus)
(The “Andrew Bird made a jazz album” concert T-shirts were a hoot, and I regret not buying one.)
But unlike the ill-fated “Jazz Odyssey” of Spinal Tap infamy, Bird’s foray into the genre is both sensical and solid — not to mention well-received by Friday evening’s interested-if-sedate audience.
Smattering of newer jazz material aside, the bulk of the whistling violinist/guitarist’s 18-song set spanned his considerable career, including beloved live standbys such as “Manifest,” “Three White Horses,” “Sisyphus,” “A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left,” “Underlands” and “The Night Before Your Birthday.”
Show closers/encores “Pulaski at Night” and “Capsized” were the one-two punch needed to finally coax the blanket-and-sweatshirt-laden crowd to its feet.
Kicking off a crisp but picturesque evening, show openers Amadou & Mariam delivered a stirring hour-long set of joyful world beat. The celebrated Mali-born married duo — who count Bird as a top fan and acolyte — have performed together for nearly five decades, representing a deep musical legacy.
Up Next at Meijer Gardens: Five For Fighting performs at 7 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $58 and available online here. Michigan singer-songwriter LVNDR opens the show.
PHOTO GALLERY: Adam Bird, Amadou & Mariam at Meijer Gardens
Photos by Anthony Norkus
