Steve Hackett - Foxtrot at 50 - Manhattan

The tour's setlist opens where Hackett's solo career began, Voyage of The Acolyte's opener "Ace of Wands". Immediately the the precision and form of the show took shape, with the expert instrumentation of the band making itself apparent and the stage lighting already sweeping across the audience and upwards to project vivid colors onto the ballroom ceiling. Hackett cheerfully said his hellos to us before breaking into a stellar performance of "The Devil's Cathedral", giving us our first taste of Nad Sylvan's wonderful vocals for the night. The set continued through some of his solo classics before giving over to a thrilling bass solo from Jonas Reingold, the rest of the musicians leaving the stage to give Reingold more room to jam and explore. At the end drummer Craig Blundell - fresh off of his spellbinding contributions to Steven Wilson's The Harmony Codex - returned to his kit to build a rhythm with Reingold to enter into Highly Strung's live favorite "Camino Royale". The last selection before the break was the always radiant "Shadow of the Hierophant".

The night's performance of Foxtrot was an expert and arresting example of playing a well worn classic practically to the note and tone. This is to say that rather than being trite or failing to match the form and power of the original - arguments can even be made as to how Genesis Live succeeded or otherwise in the latter department, after all - Hackett and his group gave one of the best possible straightforward takes on the LP. Roger King's mellotron (or else facsimile thereof, I'm unsure) started a little off timbre-wise at the very beginning of "Watcher of The Skies" but quickly regrouped into the next best sound to Tony Banks's original. From there the playing was infallible, a worthy successor and a more than enjoyable experience. Sylvan's vocals in particular take after Peter Gabriel's exceptionally well and he gave the thrust of the limited reinterpretation of the material, organically following his prerogative in the way he sang the lyrics. He also gave over to the audience to gleefully ask "A flower!?" during the titanic performance of "Supper's Ready". Hackett was ever in top form, which to my mind was most directly shown in his own band-free solo, the tender touchstone "Horizons".

This of course brings us to the extended encore. It begins with the ever popular "Firth of Fifth" done as great as ever before leading into a mesmerizing drum solo from Blundell. Finally we were given the classic sendoff "Los Endos" in the positively most frenetic performance of the evening, though not without a detour in the middle into Defector's "Slogans" to keep us on our toes and satisfy those proggy desires we didn't know we had.

Hackett and his band were astounding in NYC and played off of each other beautifully, so flowers to them including the heretofore unmentioned Rob Townsend on woodwinds, another master of his craft on that stage. I look forward to Hackett returning with both new solo songs and takes on other frontiers of Genesis's legendary oeuvre.