Renaissance was a band who enjoyed a brief run of popularity in the late seventies playing a largely classical piano-based brand of symphonic rock. Although they never quite became Moody Blues huge, they did have a sizable enough cult following to earn them a run at New York's prestigious Carnegie Hall playing with the New York Philharmonic, which was captured on the recently reissued Live At Carnegie Hall album.

While Renaissance's sound was mostly piano-based, the band were all great musicians, and had a particularly amazing bassist in Jon Camp. But the true star of Renaissance was Annie Haslam, a stunning vocalist also rarely gifted with a five octave range.

I can still remember the first time I saw them covering them as a still underage music journalist during a performance at a Seattle nightclub. Standing roughly five feet away from the band, I was rather startled to actually feel the air vibrating in front of me as Annie Haslam sang. It was a truly amazing experience, as she hit notes so high that I've no doubt every dog in the neighborhood could hear them.

Song of Scheherezade captures two Renaissance performances from roughly the same time period — one from 1976 and the other from 1979. While the music here is as amazing as I remember it, the DVD itself is far from perfect. The entire thing is shot in black and white and the often grainy visual quality also suffers due to its age.

Taking that into account, this DVD is far better than it really has any right to be. The sound, while not excellent by modern standards, is surprisingly good — kind of like about what you'd expect from an upper tier bootleg from the same period. The camera angles also capture some pretty great stuff, particularly when they zero in on Camp's bass playing — which thankfully they do fairly often.

Article Author: Glen Boyd

You'll find Blogcritics assistant music editor Glen Boyd sharing his Thoughtmares on his personal blogs The World Wide Glen, and The Rockologist. In a previous life, Glen was a music professional and journalist whose work has appeared in The Rocket, SPIN, Pulse!, and The Source. …

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