Being a vocalist myself, I'm a fan of vocal groups. I'm not a huge Manhattan Transfer fan because I feel they offer nothing original to music. They are singing other people's creations and not capturing the purpose of those creations. With the exception of 1 or 2 releases, their entire catalogue is cover music. My mother on the other hand, is not a musician and a fan of the groups. I thought it would be a great gift to her for Mother's Day.
I saw them once before at The Hollywood Bowl Playboy Jazz Festival. It was very good, and their band was excellent. The sound mixer was able to tuck the voices into the band and he used a lot of reverb. This made their vocal inconsistency disappear. It was far from perfect but it was good. I was not there to hear them. They played with several acts that night, and my boyfriend at the time wanted to hear one of the other bands.
On May the 10th in my hometown of San Diego, they were struggling. The piano player had no backbone and no consistency. He also played so hard that the poor piano fell out of tune during the third song which didn't help the Manhattan Transfer stay in tune. The vocals were completely out of tune the entire show. Not all 4 voices all the time, mostly the men. In a harmony group it only takes one person singing off key to destroy the chord. There was much destruction this night. They also had nothing to lean on as piano player thought he was playing a solo show.
To make matters worse, the people around me were all very disappointed in the song selection. Including my mom! I'm not very concerned with that, but my mom wanted to hear some hits from the 1980s. I just wanted to hear good music.
Had they performed pitch perfect all night, I'm still not sure I would see this show again. It's heavy and monotonous on the ears, it had no musical structure or variety. Stylistically they tried having structure by going through different periods in their career, but 4 singers and a limited piano player are just not capable of effectively changing up styles. They need a rhythm section for that. I say skip this and go hear them with a band.
They state that this is a limited opportunity because of the size of the venue. This can't be true as I see videos of them with their band at very small venues.
I also have to add that this is my first review on Ticketmaster. I have never purchased through ticketmaster before and was led here from the band's website. When reading these reviews I noticed that every 5 star review was written on the same day by members who have never written another review. It's suspicious because it really didn't sound good, and I have heard about management companies faking reviews. Seems suspect. Just saying.