Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

Talks and reviews about Libera concerts or public appearances

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Yorkie
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

Post by Yorkie »

gingerthedog1 wrote:
Yorkie wrote:
maartendas wrote:Wow. What a surprise.
To my knowledge that was a completely new song - and did anyone see that coming? And what a beauty.
I confess it moved me deeply.
I have been watching the whole Vigil and the concert and feel that this has been one blessed night. And I'm so happy the Libera boys got to be part of it!
Boy, do they surprise us... :D
Really? It was a poor choice in my opinion - they had so much more to offer than a third rate American gospel song 'Total Praise' - frankly the whole concert was tedious in the extreme and more suited to a retirement home than a gathering of young people. Evidence that music within the Catholic church is dead and forgotten if proof were needed.
Admittedly, it wasn't an obvious choice. However, Libera has sung quite a few American folk songs, and they always turn out decent. "Total Praise" seems like a song that fit in with the rest of the music presented in the concert as well. Perhaps they were asked to sing a gospel song by superiors involved in the event to streamline the entire concert.
Oh, I don't think Libera picked it. Clearly the organisers of the event planned it because there is no other sane explanation for the display of happy clappy pap that bored the audience tonight. And they made a hash of Libera's mics as well.
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alcesalcesobservator
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

Post by alcesalcesobservator »

The sound mix was disappointing. Very rough and unblended. The song itself could have been pretty had the sound been handled properly. But it was exciting to see Libera live--that's a first for me. Shame about the sound, but Allesandro handled his solo nicely, and they got a lot of cheers. And the boys were really enjoying themselves singing "This I Believe". Lots of happy faces.
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

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They were drowned out by the 'amalgamated forces' for the song at the end too. I think it was the WYD athem. I was hoping their 'descants' would bring a bit of high quality to proceedings. Oh well, they did the best with what they were given. High praise for Alessandro singing solo in front of so many people.
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

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alcesalcesobservator wrote:but Allesandro handled his solo nicely
Agreed.
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Liesma
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

Post by Liesma »

Is anyone still in campus?
PaulWSpaceRockDodger
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

Post by PaulWSpaceRockDodger »

World Youth Day 2016 in Poland presented Libera with some big challenges. Overall, however, performing at WYD was probably a net plus for Libera, as hundreds of thousands of people were able to learn about the choir for the first time. It is especially helpful when one of these people is the Pope! One way or another, participating in the WYD will probably open some interesting new doors for Libera in the future.
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

Post by Robolib7 »

Given the material they had to work with, I think Libera did a great job today! However, an opportunity may have been missed to make an even better impression on a very large live and tv audience with a better song choice.
The video of their performance that JimmyRiddle posted on YouTube actually looked and sounded much better than the live stream that I watched earlier. My appreciation to Jimmy and "anonymous helpers" for doing this.
I hope that this was a one-time thing and that this song will not be included in future live performances or on future cds.
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chris17
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

Post by chris17 »

I watched the YouTube video of Total Praise a couple times. It was a bit unbalanced, but it didn't sound as bad as I expected from some of the comments. While it certainly wouldn't be a song I would choose myself, overall I rather liked it. It was also nice to see a video with some of the newer boys performing.
Yorkie wrote:Really? It was a poor choice in my opinion - they had so much more to offer than a third rate American gospel song 'Total Praise' - frankly the whole concert was tedious in the extreme and more suited to a retirement home than a gathering of young people. Evidence that music within the Catholic church is dead and forgotten if proof were needed.
I apologize for the digression, but I don't think it's fair to say music within the Catholic church is dead or forgotten. I don't know who organized the concert or picked the song (which isn't a Catholic song, by the way, and I've never heard it sung during Sunday Mass or any Catholic event for that matter), but I sing in a Catholic cathedral choir and we sing plenty of decent music - Ave Maria by Biebl, Dextera Domini by Franck (one of my favorites), Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence by Bairstow, and other pieces by Mozart, Palestrina, Victoria, etc. A number of our pieces come right out of the European Sacred Music book edited by John Rutter. We also have a children's choir which sings pieces like Panis Angelicus by Franck and Schafe können sicher weiden by Bach. Furthermore, I visited my brother's nearest cathedral on the other side of the USA, a full 2,500 miles away, and they had a pretty decent choir there as well which sang similar music, including a beautiful Latin piece (though I don't remember what it was called now). It's true that music in Catholic churches (esp. in smaller, regular parishes) varies in quality and in the number of people involved, but music is hardly dead or forgotten over here.

Anyway, they did invite Libera to sing a concert of songs they presumably were able to pick themselves. That's at least a small sign of good taste. :wink:
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Yorkie
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

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chris17 wrote:I watched the YouTube video of Total Praise a couple times. It was a bit unbalanced, but it didn't sound as bad as I expected from some of the comments. While it certainly wouldn't be a song I would choose myself, overall I rather liked it. It was also nice to see a video with some of the newer boys performing.
Jimmy found a source that was much better than the stream we watched it on. No idea if he used some technical wizardry as well to enhance it further but it is significantly better than what we reacted to. There was a perceivable drop in sound quality from the acts who preceded Libera, but they all used hand held radio mics. It was almost like they forgot turn on the stand mics Libera were using.

This is Jimmy's latest video which is indeed a vast improvement:



chris17 wrote:I apologize for the digression, but I don't think it's fair to say music within the Catholic church is dead or forgotten. I don't know who organized the concert or picked the song (which isn't a Catholic song, by the way, and I've never heard it sung during Sunday Mass or any Catholic event for that matter), but I sing in a Catholic cathedral choir and we sing plenty of decent music - Ave Maria by Biebl, Dextera Domini by Franck (one of my favorites), Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence by Bairstow, and other pieces by Mozart, Palestrina, Victoria, etc. A number of our pieces come right out of the European Sacred Music book edited by John Rutter. We also have a children's choir which sings pieces like Panis Angelicus by Franck and Schafe können sicher weiden by Bach. Furthermore, I visited my brother's nearest cathedral on the other side of the USA, a full 2,500 miles away, and they had a pretty decent choir there as well which sang similar music, including a beautiful Latin piece (though I don't remember what it was called now). It's true that music in Catholic churches (esp. in smaller, regular parishes) varies in quality and in the number of people involved, but music is hardly dead or forgotten over here.

Anyway, they did invite Libera to sing a concert of songs they presumably were able to pick themselves. That's at least a small sign of good taste. :wink:
My overall point about the standard of music wasn't with reference to this song (which I'm aware isn't a Catholic song) it was in reference to two things:

1) The complete 2 hours of rubbish that passed as a concert with third rate happy clappy garbage, nuns, guitars and tambourines. Who ever put this together to entertain the Catholic youth of the world is either a sadist or tone deaf. Still I'm sure no passions were inflamed by it so I suspect their goal was achieved.

2) I could name some excellent Catholic choirs in the UK too (indeed Westminster Cathedral is one of my favourite choirs) but I think (I'll be deliberately provocative here) they are musical outliers that don't represent the norm. Still, I was being a bit OTT with the comments but that was because I had suffered greatly for 4 hours in order to hear just the one song!

Article 1

Article 2

Article 3

Highly selective and statistically meaningless I know, but this school of thought is out there. I just like to stir the pot :wink:
Last edited by Yorkie on Sun Jul 31, 2016 8:58 am, edited 2 times in total.
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chris17
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

Post by chris17 »

There's definitely some truth to the articles - I have heard my fair share of "Bad Catholic Music." One parish my family attended for a few years almost exclusively sang music from the 1970's, in fact. However, I've also heard quite a lot of good Catholic music. My point was mainly that there are Catholics (such as myself) who do care about having good music, and good Catholic music does exist, even though some people have apparently abandoned it.

I only watched the Libera bit of the concert, not everything that preceded it. Considering that guitars and tambourines were present, I can understand where you were coming from. :wink:
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Yorkie
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

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chris17 wrote:There's definitely some truth to the articles - I have heard my fair share of "Bad Catholic Music." One parish my family attended for a few years almost exclusively sang music from the 1970's, in fact. However, I've also heard quite a lot of good Catholic music. My point was mainly that there are Catholics (such as myself) who do care about having good music, and good Catholic music does exist, even though some people have apparently abandoned it.

I only watched the Libera bit of the concert, not everything that preceded it. Considering that guitars and tambourines were present, I can understand where you were coming from. :wink:
To be clear, my scathing comments were not aimed at individual good people such as yourself or Maarten, but at the bigger organisation. But what can one expect when they employ the Sistine Screamers for their big events :wink:
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

Post by dani »

I am not a fan of the song at all and hope we never hear it again personally.


It's a shame that Libera got to be broadcasted on the worlds stage but was dictated as to what to sing.
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

Post by maartendas »

I can see where the comments are coming from.
My post was highly personal and my experience of the performance was influenced by my circumstances at the moment, having been deeply affected by the Vigil as a whole. For me, it was a spiritual experience.
My original comment stays :) It was such a wonderful experience last night :)
Listening back I agree about the sound but at the moment I didn't even register it :)

One of the things that left an impression was the sheer size of the event. I can imagine it was thrilling for the boys to sing in front of 1.5 million people. All those lights everywhere :)
Living in the world today, it gives me hope to see events like this taking place, and in fact the WYD as a whole, whether you are Catholic or not.
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JimmyRiddle
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

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Yorkie wrote:Jimmy found a source that was much better than the stream we watched it on. No idea if he used some technical wizardry as well to enhance it further but it is significantly better than what we reacted to
Well I'd virtually given up on my own recorded video from the webcast. It appeared alright when watching it live but the resulting capture was jittery and the sound lagged behind the video. Then by good fortune a person who wishes to remain anonymous but you could say he's a libera was sent a link to a private video which another libera fan had obtained directly from the network TV broadcast which was obviously better quality in sound and vision. After courteous permission was granted, all I did then was boost the volume level and upload it to my YT channel.

I agree the overall 'entertainment' value purely from a watching point of view was pretty poor. There could have been spiritual messages in there somewhere, but I think they could have been better presented to a younger audience in relation to some of the acts they had on.
chris17 wrote:I sing in a Catholic cathedral choir and we sing plenty of decent music - Ave Maria by Biebl, Dextera Domini by Franck (one of my favorites), Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence by Bairstow, and other pieces by Mozart, Palestrina, Victoria, etc. A number of our pieces come right out of the European Sacred Music book edited by John Rutter. We also have a children's choir which sings pieces like Panis Angelicus by Franck and Schafe können sicher weiden by Bach.
... I think any of those selections above would have raised the bar somewhat to the general feeling of cruise liner entertainment that took to the stage.... until the class act of the night came on in their white robes.

I don't think the song choice 'Total Praise' would be at the top of any of our lists in the strong libera repertoire but even then they sprinkled a bit of gold-dust on it.
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Re: Continental Europe Tour Summer 2016

Post by Sjh »

Was disappointed with the song something that a older group of boys would have been better equipped to bring off, the group from the US Cd I feel would have been better suited to it with the deeper voices supporting the still many young treble's of last nights group. Hope the boys wear happy with their performance was thinking not long ago one or two of those happy faces wear in front of a much smaller audience for the first time. Also great credit must go to the support team in preparing them to be able to do it, at that age you would not have seen my feet for the dust as the sight of so many faces sunk in.
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