Josh Groban-In Concert (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Menu Animation & Audio Featurette-Making Of Featurette-Chris Groban's Backstage Footage Web Links CD Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	78:52 (Case: 105)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (41:44)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	David Horn
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Josh Groban David Foster John Williams Lili Haydn Andrea Corr Angie Stone
Case	Amaray-Transparent-S/C-Dual
RPI	$44.95	Music	Various

    Josh Groban was "discovered" by famous music producer/songwriter/arranger David Foster (who has been involved with a "Who's Who" list of famous musicians including Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand, and Chicago as well as releasing a number of easy listening, mostly instrumental, albums). He is probably best known for his appearances on Ally McBeal as well as a number of US-based chat shows and a duet with Charlotte Church at the closing of the Winter Olympics Ceremony in Salt Lake City.

    And now he stars in his very own concert and TV special, broadcast on the US PBS network as part of their "Great Performances" series on 23 November 2002. The concert itself was held on 4 October 2002 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

    Josh's voice is a little deeper and less smooth that I remembered it from his debut album (of course, some would say his voice is now less "wimpish"). However, I still found his voice fairly captivating.

    One of the problems any relatively new artist faces in a first concert is a lack of repertoire. Josh sings every song from his debut album, plus For Always (featured in the movie A.I.) and a new song called Broken Vow (featuring David Foster on the piano). Even so, the concert is struggling to hit 2 hours.

    A fair number of songs are in foreign languages, including one in French, one in Spanish and a fair few in Italian. Unfortunately, Josh sounds a bit bland singing Italian or Spanish songs - he lacks a certain Latin "fire." However, the plus is that he enunciates his words so slowly and carefully that it was easy even for me to understand some of them.

    In this concert, Josh is accompanied by a number of musicians:

• Zachary Provost: Leader/Keyboards
• Tariqh Akoni: Electric Guitar
• Timothy Curle: Percussion
• Eric Holden: Bass
• John Robinson: Drums
• Ramon Stagnaro: Acoustic Guitar

    In addition, there is also an orchestra conducted by William Ross. Josh introduces the band after singing Cinema Paradiso.

    The first of several guest stars is mentor and producer David Foster, who comes on stage just before Broken Vow. David and Josh talk a bit about Josh's career to date, and David even persuades Josh to tinkle a few keys on the piano (apparently Josh is a good pianist as well as playing the drums). Josh cheekily responds by playing a few snippets from one of David Foster's songs (Hard To Say I'm Sorry) plus an Elton John number (Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word). David accompanies Josh in two songs: Broken Vow and To Where You Are.

    The next major guest is famous film composer and conductor (and not the guitarist) John Williams, who had to name-drop Steven Spielberg into the conversation. John conducts the orchestra whilst Josh sings For Always.

    Other guest artists include Andrea Corr from The Corrs (Canto Alla Vita), violinist/singer Lili Haydn (Jesu Joy Of Man's Desiring), and Angie Stone (The Prayer). The only artist I expected to see but didn't turn up was Charlotte Church.

    Overall, you could do worse than spending some time watching this concert. I enjoyed it thoroughly and will recommend it wholeheartedly to fans of Josh Groban.

Video

    This is a 1.33:1 full frame video transfer, based on a video source intended for broadcast TV.

    The video quality is excellent, with fully saturated and vivid colours, and reasonable levels of detail.

    I did not notice any major video artefacts at all, apart from occasional shimmering/aliasing (such as on the strings of Lili Haydn's violin) and Josh's white shirt in Let Me Fall seems to suffer from saturated highlights.

    There are subtitle tracks in English, French, and German. I turned on the English subtitle tracks, and was very pleased to discover that song lyrics are faithfully transcribed (including in the original language for songs sung in a foreign language).

    This is a single sided dual layered disc (RSDL). The layer change occurs in transition from Chapter 8 to 9 at 41:44. It is very well placed as it occurs in one of the few quiet moments in the feature in an edit point.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are three audio tracks on this disc: English Linear PCM 48/16 2.0 (1536Kb/s), English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s), and English dts 5.0 (768Kb/s). Unfortunately, the audio tracks cannot be switched 'on the fly' necessitating going back to the menu and then resuming play.

    The Linear PCM 2.0 track is pretty much reference quality - sounding quite pleasant and with no obvious issues.

    The dts track appears to be mixed in "4.0", i.e. there is no centre channel and apparently no subwoofer. It is a decent sounding track, but lacked sparkle, detail, depth and realism in comparison to the PCM track. The timbre of Josh's voice sounded most natural and smooth on the PCM track, and a bit chesty on the dts track.

    In comparison, the Dolby Digital 5.1 track sounded decidedly inferior compared to the other two. Josh's voice sounded quite garish and glazed and the overall track generally lacked low level detail. Interestingly though, I detected light usage of the subwoofer in the Dolby Digital 5.1 track so the LFE channel is definitely active.

    Both surround tracks utilize the surround channels mostly for ambience and audience noises.

    I did not notice any issues with audio synchronization.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The extras include two short featurettes. I would have liked to have seen more, but at least this is something. Interestingly, both featurettes are subtitled in English, German and French.

Menu

    All menus are full frame, animated and include background audio.

Featurette - Making Of (13:18)

    This is presented in 1.33:1 full frame and Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s). It features backstage footage before the show and rehearsal footage.

    Interviews include:

• David Foster
• Josh Groban
• Zachary Provost
• David Romano
• John Williams
• Humberto Gatica

Featurette - Chris Groban's Backstage Footage (9:57)

    This appears to be captured by Josh's brother Chris on his divicam. It is presented in full frame and Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s). It covers two nights of rehearsal and after the concert.

    The following people are captioned in the video:

• John Williams (guest conductor)
• Lindy Groban (Josh's mother)
• Jack Groban (Josh's father)
• Chris Groban (Josh's brother)
• Brian Avnet (Josh's manager)
• Ramone Stagnaro (guitar)
• Pierre Requena (sound)
• Tariqh Akoni (guitar)
• Tim Curle (percussion)

DVD-ROM Content - Web Links

    This seems to consist of the ubiquitous InterActual DVD player plus some web pages including web links to the Josh Groban and Warner Bros Records web sites. An "exclusive DVD link" seems to link to a Warner Bros web site listing new and upcoming releases.

Credits (1:09)

    This is a video segment that is the same as the end titles in the main feature.

CD (37:13)

    I think including a CD in the package is a great idea, however the concept is somewhat poorly executed. We get a CD containing a selection of 7 songs taken from the concert, plus a bonus track (O Holy Night). Less that half the CD is filled - why not include more songs and fill up the entire CD? Maybe they were afraid to cannibalise sales of the studio album.

    The CD includes the following tracks:

• Un Amore Per Sempre
• Alejate
• The Prayer
• For Always
• Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)
• Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring
• Broken Vow
• O Holy Night

    This disc appears to be identically featured (apart from PAL vs NTSC formatting) for Regions 1 and 4.

    Josh Groban In Concert features the young singer performing all the songs from his debut album and then some in a made-for-TV special concert. Guest artists include David Foster, John Williams, Andrea Corr, Lili Haydn and Angie Stone.

    The video transfer quality is excellent.

    The audio transfer quality for all tracks is also excellent.

    The extras include two featurettes.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall