My first show of this tour was at Proctor's Theater in Schenectady, New York.  Proctor's is an old vaudeville theater that has been beautifully restored.  The outside entrances lead to a small arcade area with shops and the box office.  The theater itself is rather small, as is the stage.  The lady beside me said they used to hold ice skating shows (!) on that stage but had to stop because of safety concerns due to space constraints.

Despite being PBS pledge seats, my seats were rather far back, row 23 to be exact.  My second ticket was graciously accepted by Bruce.  He plays french horn at the Proctor's and was curious what it would be like to see the stage from the other side!

By the way, one thing that has always bugged me about these wonderfully restored theaters is that they won't let anyone take pictures of them.  PPAC in Providence is an absolutely magnificent theater and like Proctor's they don't allow cameras.  What are they trying to hide?  OK, back to the review.

My first shows from the New Journey tour had few surprises since I had obviously watched the DVDs several hundred times.  This time was different since, despite having devoured the reviews, there were many things that I had not seen or heard before.  As such, it was difficult to take everything in at once and there were parts that I needed to see again before I could form an opinion.

The first half gowns are gorgeous, even from a distance.  I was much less enthusiastic about the second half gowns.  From the 23rd row it was difficult to really see the details of the design and they looked rather out of place.  I've since changed my opinion.

The familiar songs were as beautiful as ever and I'm so glad that they kept Máiréad's Last Rose instrumental (they even gave it an official title) and Chloë's Nella Fantasia.  Hearing the new songs for the first time is a little overwhelming.  Do you listen to the melody or the words; do you watch the background images; or do you watch the lighting?  It's almost too much to take in all at once and, of course, you can't press rewind to watch it again.  Máiréad's new solo, Coast of Galicia, is amazing, but she was a little restricted by the size of the stage.  I loved Chloë's When You Believe and I liked Lisa's Fields of Gold but I was undecided about the rest until I could hear them again.

The sound seemed to be less powerful than usual.  Perhaps it was the distance from the stage or perhaps they kept it more restrained because of the environment, but the big numbers didn't seem quite as big as last year.

I left that show in a very annoying (to me) state of indecision.  I so much wanted to love all of the new things but I wasn't quite ready to yet.  It seemed like it was over too quickly, even though I think it's a longer show than last year, and I didn't have time to absorb everything yet.  The newness of it all was a little overwhelming, in a good way.  Tomorrow would be a better day.

Original review is here.