Yes Live: Masterworks Tour 07/22/2000 At Meadows Music Theater In Hartford, Connecticut

Here is very nice audience-recorded audio from the British progressive rock band Yes performing on July 22, 2000 at The Meadows Music Theater (now known as the Xfinity Theater) in Hartford, Connecticut on the 'Masterworks' tour.

This great 2000 tour, featuring keyboardist Igor Khoroshev, brought epic pieces from the band's catalogue like "Gates Of Delirium" (from the 1974 'Relayer' album) and "Ritual" (from the 1973 'Tales From Topographic Oceans' album) out of storage and onto the stage after decades since they were last in a setlist.

Instead of just graphics of the band onstage, this post builds on the Masterworks theme by featuring and having fun with master works by the artists Edward Hopper, Vincent van Gogh, Kehinde Wiley, Amy Sherald, Frida Kahlo, Grant Wood, Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci.

Pictures/comments: http://forgotten-yesterdays.com/dates...

SETLIST (time-stamped):

1. Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra (Introduction)

2. Close To The Edge 2:15
(featuring master works of Nature)

3. Starship Trooper 22:50
(featuring the 1942 oil-on-canvas painting Nighthawks by the American artist Edward Hopper and also the various Dragonfly elements used in Yes logos and graphics)

4. Gates Of Delirium 36:00
(featuring the June 1889 oil-on-canvas painting The Starry Night by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh)

5. Leaves Of Green 1:00:15
(featuring Kehinde Wiley's portrait of former President Barack Obama and Amy Sherald's portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama as commissioned in 2017 for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Wiley and Sherald are the first African-Americans ever to receive presidential portrait commissions from the National Portrait Gallery. The portraits were unveiled together in 2018 and have significantly increased attendance at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.)

6. Heart Of The Sunrise 1:06:00
(featuring the works of Frida Kahlo. Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (July 6 1907 – July 13 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country's popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy.)

7. Ritual 1:19:00
(featuring the 1930 painting American Gothic by Grant Wood. Wood was inspired to paint what is now known as the American Gothic House in Eldon, Iowa, along with "the kind of people [he] fancied should live in that house". It depicts a farmer standing beside his daughter – often mistakenly assumed to be his wife. The painting's name is a word play on the house's architectural style, Carpenter Gothic)

8. Your Move / I've Seen All Good People 1:47:15
(featuring the oil painting Three Musicians by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso as completed in the summer of 1921 in Fontainebleau near Paris, France)

9. Roundabout 1:54:20
(featuring the painting Mona Lisa by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506; however, Leonardo may have continued working on it as late as 1517. It has been on permanent display at the Louvre in Paris since 1797)

LINEUP:
Jon Anderson - vocals, acoustic guitar
Chris Squire - bass, backing vocals
Steve Howe - electric and acoustic guitars, backing vocals
Igor Khoroshev - keyboards
Alan White - drums, percussion

TAPER NOTES:
Lineage: Unknown DAT / Trade CDR / EAC (secure) / Wavelab 4.0 / xACT (extraction) / Sound Studio (retrack) / xACT (FLAC level 5) / Dime

This is a nice recording from the Masterworks tour. "Young Persons Guide.." and the end of "Roundabout" were missing and are patched from an alternate recording of the show. Steve was having trouble with his electric sitar the entire evening, and had to play most of the sitar parts in "Ritual" on a different guitar.

It was tough to get a capture this good at the Meadows, but this one manages while still revealing what a "Saturday night in Hartford" crowd this was.

On this tour the band began to gel right about the end of the first week in July. Two dates were cancelled right about then when Jon came down with a frog in his throat, and when they picked back up that's when the performances really began to shine. There were some missed cues and a few 'almost' trainwrecks, but they really had gotten the material under control and begun to have fun with it for the first time in over two decades.

This particular Saturday in Hartford was the middle of a long weekend working three big East Coast cites and the band that hits the stage is all business. This is the tightest performance so far on the tour, and a breathtaking performance by all. Very different vibe from the New York tapes and probably more what the fans seem after: tight tight tight!

--MP March 2005