Shlomo Artzi celebrates 50 years on stage at Live Park Rishon (15/08)

Shlomo Artzi's marathon three hour set was full of missteps.

The first of two shows to celebrate his fifty year career, the dazzling set list included plenty of his decades-spanning hits and a number of highly touted guest spots that didn't disappoint (Natan Goshen, Haim Moshe, Rita, Shalom Hanoch, and David Broza).  But Artzi's frequent improvisations (i.e. mid-song speeches and tempo changes) curtailed the momentum of the set far too often.  With his guests, Artzi resorted to calling out the verse numbers far too many times, directing his duets on the fly as if he was in a rehearsal, rather than in front of 12 000 people in a park.  He and his band are experienced enough to fly by the seat of their pants without letting the entire song go off the rails, but such ramshackle planning doesn't make for the best concertgoing experience.  After playing some of his bigger uptempo hits at the start (e.g. "Nitzmadnu", "Eretz Hadasha"), the set seemed to lose direction, becoming a sort of jam session with his band and his guests, and the various interludes were often charming, but also needlessly stretched out the evening to a nearly 1 AM finish, much to the chagrin of many exhausted audience members.

And yet, none of the above really seemed to matter.  Artzi is a captivating, dynamic performer, one of the best I've ever seen at interacting with a crowd and holding them in the palm of his hand.  He owns the stage even when he breaks the rules, and as he nears age 70, his voice sounds and good as ever and his onstage energy is boundless.  His guests are pros who can craft magic on stage simply with their presence. 

Consider the opening of this concert: quick cuts of Artzi and his family over the years, live shots of the band walking on stage, "Nitzmadnu", a mid-song speech about his lack of nervousness coming on stage and crying when his kids were born (among other things), and a final, powerful coda to the song.  It was a continuous lump-in-throat moment that happens only rarely in concerts, and virtually never in the first ten minutes.