Vivid LIVE: Yaeji // José González

Sydney came alive again over the weekend as they turned on the lights for Vivid 2023, and with that also comes Vivid LIVE at the Sydney Opera House.

They’ve got quite an impressive lineup of artists on this year’s schedule and I was able to catch two of those this weekend. It’s always such a treat to see some of your favourite artists performing inside the Sydney Opera House and I can only imagine how amazing that must be for the artists as well.

I caught Yaeji’s show on Saturday night inside the Joan Sutherland Theatre and holy-shit, she was so much fun!!

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from her live show or how she would even do it, and while it was a fairly basic set-up of her on stage singing to a backing track, she managed to make it feel larger-than-life with these visually stimulating projections, strobing lights, two back-up dancers and herself busting-out some super cute dance moves.

These Opera House shows are fully seated performances and you could see some people just itching to get up and dance, and right near the end there was no holding back, Yaeji had the entire theatre up and bouncing to her closing songs (check out this little teaser).

On Sunday night I got to see José González perform inside the Concert Hall, and it was nothing like what I was expecting.

It’s actually the the 20th anniversary of his first album “Veneer” and the whole concept for his Vivid shows was to perform that album in-full with just him on stage with his guitar and microphone. It was a truly captivating performance, his voice is flawless and his guitar work is just impeccable.

I have to say those songs brought back a lot of memories from my own youth (all mostly good), and I can only imagine how it must have been for José to relive all of those memories and revisit all the emotions he was experiencing 20 years ago when he recorded that album…

José closed out his set with a bunch of covers which of course included ‘Heartbeats‘ (The Knife) and ‘Teardrop‘ (Massive Attack), and I’m pretty sure everyone left that show with a big smile on their face.

I cannot recommend Vivid LIVE enough, so please check out this year’s schedule and go see some shows: https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/vivid-live