Customer Reviews

Nina Simone - Live at Montreux 1976

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The main feature film from 1976 is overwhelming. The performance itself is incredible, but the filming is especially unique. The camera is focused for nearly the entire performance in a close-up on Nina's face, with great clarity and detail. The shots of her piano playing are also very well done. Nina's interaction with the audience is riveting. This is an absolute must.

I experienced the great Dr Simone in 1978 and 1979 in London and she was well - just Nina - totally eccentric and yet riveting.
The 1976 Montreux concert is a great experience - yes the diva is so great it defies description. She lives life (I got life) OK. I Wish I Knew and Feelings are so stellar in emotion that it is difficult to convey how great the interpretations are. Lets just say that they take your breath away.
The 1987 and 1990 bonus tracks are OK but they are too edited - Nina is best experienced in totality which the 1976 concert is. I thoroughly recommend that you buy this concert DVD and trust that Dr Simone's estate release many more of her concerts on DVD - once you see her live you can never forget how great she was.
A Diva supreme

I really enjoyed this dvd. The filming is great and Nina has some funny and touching moments as she performs. I also learned a little more about her as she would talk before some of her songs. This is truly a treasure. The song that touched me the most was "Stars/Feelings" The other songs are great too, but that stood out. It almost actually made me emotional. She took feelings a song that most people heard another version of and changed it into this beautiful and touching song, just by the way she sung it and the way she changed the words. YOU HAVE TO SEE IT!
BUY IT!

I was given this DVD as a gift a long while ago - and it sat on a shelf. Just played it this evening and I am awestruck at its power. Dr. Simone is more than expressive when she performs. I felt her passion so personally and deeply, because she lets it all out for the world to see. And her skill at the keyboard is simply unbelievable. I am grateful to the camera man who shot so close to catch her soul and her keying. I cannot recommend it enough. In fact, I have never bothered to write a review on Amazon.com; but this DVD was so compelling that I had to tell someone about it.

This is a really odd concert video. There are several parts: six songs from 1976, two songs from 1987, and four songs from 1990. The 1976 songs are my favorite. Nina's personality is strong and to be honest, really weird - just as i'd heard. a lot of the footage from this earlier concert is shot really close up to her face. this sounds like it would be really boring, but there's something really cool, intimate, and hypnotizing about it. that's what is odd about the concert footage. but i'm not saying it's bad, this is actually a very entertaining concert. the song choice includes some well known classic songs and some less popular (but good) songs. i haven't seen any other videos of Nina, but this one is really damn cool. the music is great - that's just a given.

I had 'I Loves You Porgy' by Nina when I was a kid. Think it was on the Bethlehem Label. After all these decades gone by, I realized I had never had the chance to see her in person, or on film. So, I took a chance and bought this dvd.
When I get on a music kick, I buy a lot of concert dvds. Think I bought 25 of um this month.
Anyway, I was just going to check out the sound and picture quality of this dvd, ya know, maybe catch a tune or two, then go on to the others that came in the mail.
No way! I sat there, completely spellbound. The 1976 Montreux Concert, as others have mentioned, is an experience that defies description. Her stage persona was like no other. She can put a spell on you, and leave you absolutely riveted to her every phrase. The close-up camera work, only adds to the effect.
I dont know what else to say, because...there are no words.
Experience this performance soon.

Spaning a period of 14 years you get 3 outstanding performances with 14 songs. The camera work is excellent and captures the total emotional impact of each song she delivers. The audience loves her no matter what she does, be it scolding a stage hand or reprimanding someone for distracting her. Her showmanship is only outdone by her outstanding work at the piano. Live at Montreux is the best!

Last night I watched a DVD of a Nina Simone concert and I learned a thing or two about her I didn't know before.

I first discovered Nina Simone about 20 years ago ' ever since she's been one of my icons. I get shivers up my spine whenever I listened to her sing Dylan's Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues or Leonard Cohen's Suzanne. I explored the incredible diversity of her repertoire. I loved that she could handle anything ' show music, children's songs, folk music, pop anthems, jazz standards, protest songs ' and make whatever she sang a Nina Simone song. I loved her voice. I saw the tail end of her career, and her impact was often diminished by poor recordings ' sadly, her voice gave out in the end.

Back in 1976 Nina Simone was 43. She's filmed in closeup throughout the concert. I could see an incredibly charismatic, powerfully emotional personality, and that she was a very beautiful woman, even in her 40s. Here was an intelligent woman who thought about her emotions and the world she lived in. There seemed a lot going on inside her and only a small portion of it was expressed.

Nina talked to the audience about some of the things in her mind. Then, abruptly, she sat down and played the piano. At some stage she said, I'm a pianist, the singing was just an accident, something she's often said. She played some of the best piano I've ever heard. She played rhythm section on the bass keys while the drummer showed off, she played improvisational jazz chords, she played powerful classical crescendos. Nina played piano with a range and flair that I think few other pianists could match. She held the show together effortlessly with her piano, with only a percussionist to support her, and the sound was flawlessly recorded. I realised that a lot of her studio work has featured her vocal and that her backing combo has often not featured her piano, which seems more in evidence in her live recordings. Throughout the concert I got the feeling I was just seeing the tip of the iceberg, that she was capable of far more.

The audience loved her but they did not give her her due. She was just back from her residence in Liberia and I thought she seemed to want an African response, the rhythm clapped in unison, the chorus chanted in point and counterpoint. She got instead a fairly staid and sporadic applause, the faces in the crowd mostly expressionless. The men had long hair and beards, someone was smoking a joint (1976, right!) yet they looked conservative. Someone yelled at her for talking too much and asked her to start singing a song. I thought this might be why she was such an emotionally powerful performer, because she had never connected emotionally to her satisfaction with people in her personal life.

There were only six songs in the '76 set: Little Girl Blue; Backlash Blues; Be My Husband; I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel to be Free); Stars / Feelings; African Mailman. Nina was a little high on the night, she was just back from Africa, she'd spent time with her daughter, she was bitter about what was happening in America. Whatever. I have rarely heard such devastating emotion in a singer's delivery. Whatever was happening in Nina's life, happiness, torment, fear, despair ' or all of them mixed together, it was in her tones as she sang. When I say Nina Simone was an emotionally powerful performer I don't just mean that she felt powerfully. She harnessed her feeling to an incredibly skilled vocal and musical performance, and that takes a discipline that few people are capable of.

The DVD includes some tracks from Nina's performances at Montreux in 1987 and 1990. Nina was 54 and 57, grown somewhat portly and much more self contained. She now had a band behind her, stays behind her piano, engages a lot less with the audience and does more of a self consciously 'entertainment act'. You'll enjoy the music: Someone to Watch Over Me; My Baby Just Cares For Me; I Loves You Porgy; Liberian Calypso; Four Women / Mississippi Goddam; Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don't Leave Me). But if you've not seen them before, you'll never forget the '76 versions of I Wish I Knew and Stars/Feelings.

Someone like this doesn't happen very often.

This is essential to watch. Not even the most expensive production can equal true honest talent and emotion. Total intimacy.

Magnificent perfomer transcending genres and bringing together different styles, Nina Simone is one of those marginally jazzy ladies whom jazz fans (such as myself) have a soft spot for...

But, look at the main feature of the DVD - her 1976 appearance in Montreaux jazz festival scene, such power and emotional intensity is rarely seen! Since that segment is also beautifully filmed (and, BTW, Nina looks remarkable and gorgeous)... Among the unexpected pleasures are, ofcourse, the reworking of "Feelings" and an African drum feature in the end ("African Mailman").

The parts of her later two performances at Montreaux (in 1987 and 1990) are very welcome adittion ("Someone to Watch" over me will particularly interest Nina's jazz fans).
In adition to music highlihts, these bonus tracks give some of the most popular Nina Simone songs ("My Baby just cares for me", "I Loves You Porgy" ...), not performed in the glorious 1976. main feature.