David Benoit in Manila (2010)

David Benoit killed my piano career. Seriously.

When my piano teacher shifted my studies to jazz she introduced me to David Benoit. I wasn't unfamiliar with his music since it was played often at home when I was a kid. When my piano teacher handed me his book and asked me to study playing "Kei's Song" I realized that David Benoit's music is meant to be listened to. I just managed the first few bars of the song and that was the end of my piano studies. Hopefully Miguel will take it on and conquer David Benoit.

Sweetie surprised me with tickets to David Benoit's concert. We were really excited and listened to his songs most of the day. Evening came and we headed to PICC to attend the one-night only event. Found our seats and didn't have to wait long for the show to start.

AWESOME. The concert was full of surprises. I was amazed at how David Benoit played the piano. His fingers was all over the keyboard and they were really, really fast. My finger dexterity is probably 1/100th of David Benoit's. I would never have been able to play any of his songs (except for the really slow parts haha). I was also surprised with the spirited way he conducted the Filharmonika orchestra. I don't remember the title of the song, but it was very rich and sounded like it was a theme for a Disney movie. David Benoit also played his other hits, "Stages", "Freedom at Midnight", "Kei's Song" among others and a couple of songs he said he debuted here locally the last time he was here (7 years ago). And he played Michael Jackson's "Human Nature".

Anyway, I had so much fun watching the concert. I took a video of the encore song, unfortunately though I'm still trying to figure out how to download it from my N1 (me iz slow hehehe). Here's a video of "Freedom at Midnight" by someone seated nearby:



Too bad I couldn't find any videos (yet) of Bituin Escalante's performance at the show. She totally fabulous!