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Looks like we made it a special night for Manilow
Photo
Barry Manilow, third from left, met with Covelli Centre officials after his concert at the Youngstown venue. Pictured are, from left, Kelsey Rupert, director of sales and marketing; Susan Jacobson, director of finance; Manilow; Ken Bigley, assistant director; Tracy Biery, box-office manager; and Eric Ryan, executive director.
YOUNGSTOWN
Pop legend Barry Manilow, who played a sold-out show at the Covelli Centre, is singing the praises of Youngstown and the concert’s audience.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime evening for me,” Manilow wrote on his Facebook page about last Saturday’s show.
Manilow wrote that when he drove into Youngstown, his first visit here, he saw a “quiet, sleepy, clean American town. Like in the movies, I expected a sedate and polite audience.”
“Holy mackeral [sic]! This audience was insane! Wild! Sensational!” he wrote. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sound like that coming at me. Roaring, shouting, applauding, cheering filling the arena and surrounding and engulfing me. I wonder if they knew how deeply moved I was.”
Manilow had kind words for his audiences in Toronto, Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and Windsor, Ontario — the other stops on his summer tour — but not nearly as enthusiastic as his thoughts on the Youngstown crowd.
The Youngstown Symphony Orchestra played with Manilow on the four-event tour.
Manilow wrote the orchestra played “my music so beautifully.”
Even though the tour was a bit hectic, primarily because heavy rain forced the Toronto concert to be postponed from Aug. 24 to Aug. 26, the orchestra members had wonderful experiences playing with Manilow.
“He’s a great performer — a nice and talented man,” said Gloria Slocum, who plays violin and performed at the four Manilow concerts. “He’s still so talented and so into the show. It was a real thrill” to tour with him.
Manilow also asked the orchestra members to take a picture with him Sunday in Windsor after the last show of the tour.
“We were surprised they wanted a picture,” Slocum said. “We are who we are. We play, but he’s a big deal.”
There wasn’t much interaction between Manilow and the orchestra members, Slocum said.
When the orchestra members saw Manilow, he was polite, usually say, “Hi, how are you?” she said. “That was it.”
Joining the 44 Youngstown Symphony Orchestra members were Patricia C. Syak, executive director for the Youngstown Symphony Society, who served as the orchestra’s tour manager and liaison to Manilow’s management team, and Lucy Sharkey, the orchestra’s librarian.
Unlike the musicians, Syak and Sharkey got to talk briefly to the pop-music legend.
“Barry was with his manager, and his manager stopped Barry to introduce us,” Sharkey said. “He shook our hands and thanked us. It was very exciting.”
Sharkey’s job as librarian is to distribute and then collect folders with sheet music of Manilow’s songs to the musicians. The folders each weigh a few pounds.
While most of the songs were the same for each show, Sharkey said Manilow would change things up at every event.
Syak also handled the logistics for the orchestra musicians including getting hotel rooms and making sure they got to the venues.
The biggest challenge, she said, was rescheduling the Toronto show.
Syak missed the Saratoga Springs show because she was on the phone at the time getting cultural visas and hotel rooms for the musicians for the make-up show in Toronto.
About 10 symphony musicians didn’t play the Toronto show because of prior commitments, Syak said.
The symphony did a “great job and was well received,” she said. “Everyone had a good time. It was a fun experience.”
Manilow played to a sold-out audience of about 6,000 at the Covelli Centre on Saturday, said Eric Ryan, the venue’s executive director.
Ryan said Manilow asked to meet with him and his staff after the show ended, an event that wasn’t scheduled.
“He was very complimentary and said the energy in the building was great and the reaction from the crowd was as good as he ever had,” Ryan said. “He asked if it’s always like this. I told him that the community is appreciative when someone like him comes to town. He said he’d come back anytime.
“To have an icon speak so highly of us, the community, the crowd and the venue is a huge feather in our cap.”
Ryan said he plans to use Manilow’s Facebook comments “to attract other artists” to the Youngstown center.