A Winter Evening with Stream of Passion 2013

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I realize everyone is alreay sick of my gig reports, but can’t really help it. Let’s just keep it short…

On December 28, 2012 the Dutch progressive metal band Stream of Passion, lead by the splendid Marcela Bovio, gave a festive Christmas/New Year’s Eve gig.

The gig took place at a traditionally small venue, this time at Tivoli in Utrecht. It featured a number of guest musicians from other projects.

The guest no. one: violinist Ben Mathot from the legendary prog metal band Ayreon (on the left):

Ben’s violin was gorgeous. However Marcela demonstrated she wasn’t born yesterday either:

The guest no. two was Marjan Welman from Autumn. Last time they didn’t really impress me, but as a duo they sound just perfectly.

The third guest was Charlotte Wessels from Delain. We’ll come back to her in a bit.

There was also Daniel de Jongh from Textures, but it wasn’t really my cup of tea. Even Marcela introduced him with: “Here’s Daniel from the band… what’s the name again… Textures” (that was a joke of course). Although their music I find interesting. Marcela sang their track Awake (which was played unplugged), but without Daniel for some reason:

How Ben masters the violin, is really impressive.

Marcela made up her mind after a while.

She performed Summertime from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess:

One can notice the high notes are difficult for her.

Who I liked a lot was Damian Wilson, old and new singer in Threshold and a lot of other projects: Ayreon, Headspace, Star One, Landmarq, Gary Hughes, English Rock Ensemble, Guy Fletcher, Aina, After Forever, Mostly Autumn, Praying Mantis, he also played the lead role in the musical Les Misérables.

He’s an extremely positive guy, with a broad vocal range and a strong voice. The whole gang played one of Ayreon’s hits Into the Black Hole:

That’s a masterpiece, no comment required. I can only concur with Johan van Stratum (bass):

Stephan Schultz’ play also stands out:

Some more photos:

At the end of the show Damian came up with the idea of a stage dive.

He invited Charlotte to join the dive, but wouldn’t want to do it all at once. “If we jump together, he said, they’ll only catch you.”

So Charlotte jumped, or rather lay on the hands, mostly masculine naturally:

After a bit of crowd surfing (everyone wanted to touch the beauty), she asked the crowd to bring her down:

Now it was Damian’s turn. He jumped and dove right into the sea of hands:

But we managed.

I’ve shot quite some videos at the gig. My place was near by the stage, so the quality is reasonable, and it’s all in HD:

To conclude: it’s been one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. The atmosphere was fantastic, and I think it’s also due to the holiday period. Everything was positive and sweet, just like at home. ■

A Winter Evening with Stream of Passion 2013

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