The Swell Season Concert (and Jazz playoffs)...

Tracey Noonan and I had such a great time Friday night. We went to a concert with Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova. Their album, "The Swell Season" is one of my favorites. We saw them at the Sundance Film Festival last year when they had their movie there. It was a huge hit and the song, "Falling Slowly" won an Oscar. I bought tickets to their concert the second I saw that they were coming to Salt Lake City. They are from Ireland (she is actually originally from Czech Republic but lives in Dublin now), so it is a very rare opportunity to see them perform here. The concert was at The Depot at the Gateway. I hadn't ever been to there before, it was a nice venue.

Tracey and I experimented with my new camera. It is amazing to me that you can actually take pictures like this at a dark concert, without a flash! We were up on a mezzanine, not all that close to the artists. We were laughing at a guy in front of us who kept taking all of these pictures with a point-and-shoot and they were all just solid black. We could see his results, and ours...we were happy with ours! Tracey took most of the good ones (after incredible direction from me, of course). She was more brave than I was...we had to go over to a secure place and ask a security guard each time. We might look into a future with concert photography (is there such a thing?).

Glen Hansard was really funny the whole night. At one point he said that he & Marketa wanted to see what all the "who-ha" was all about in Salt Lake. They went to the temple to see it. Amazed by how beautiful it was, they tried to go in and were told they couldn't go in. He thought that was so interesting. They were told that they could go to the Visitor's Center and see pictures of the inside. They went and there was a lady that attached on to them and stayed by their side for a couple of hours. The way he told it, it was quite funny.


Someone in the audience had knitted hats for the musicians. Glen Hansard put his on (Marketa politely set hers to the side) and kept it on for the next few songs!



These pictures are our attempts at being "artistic"...Tracey's is the one above, and mine is the one below. I'll let you decide for yourself which one you like best!

After the concert was over, we went across the street to the Delta Center and saw the Jazz win their final game in the first series. It's always fun to be there when they win in the playoffs!




We really only went in to get the game-winning mints that they pass out at the end of the game (Tracey hadn't ever had one)!

We went out to a very late dinner at the Gateway after the game. We really packed it in that night, but we had such a great time (until 6:30 a.m. Saturday morning when I had to take Andrew to a lacrosse game, only then did I regret the night a bit!).