Yngwie Malmsteen
Vibes Event Center
San Antonio, Texas
April 24, 2019
Written and Photographed by Stacey Lovett
Yngwie Malmsteen exhibits the madness of a musical genius on stage – the inner workings of his mind are played out against a wall of amplifiers and his darkness broken up only in the fiery orange stage lights and smoke– a chiaroscuro of his image only naturally gracing the baroque inspiration he has birthed into heavy metal.
His guitar mastery is insane. A true virtuoso. He nurtures the ornate detail every note giving them voice between every bit of emotion in the song. There’s a certain mysticism about his artistry; as he doles out the rock grandeur for the audience he preserves a real personal connection to himself and his bond to the music. He maintains his own composure – a dark and unapologetic one – as he melds bold electric power with notes of classical antiquity into a full-bodied force satiating the body and mind. When you electrify the classical ‘mind music’ you bridge a gap not only between genres but the way the music hits you inside. Malmsteen goes beyond crafting an emotion and fills in the florid details of everything you didn’t even know or expect it to be with an interplay of dark and light on multiple levels. He holds an extreme depth of understanding of the fundamentals within classical music and translates those instrumental values into one guitar, pouring over the borders of what most limit it to and taking his respect for it into grander, more extravagant levels. The essence of his sound simply can’t be broken down to be appreciated or performed in one event, instead, it does a greater justice for his whole musical compendium to be viewed as the masterpiece of what he has inscribed into the world of rock. He performs it in this manner too, as it should be, shredding the illustrations of his mind in the most grandeur fashion showcasing musical history as his own arpeggio dipping into Bach from the present and back in a marriage of the depths of darkness and the contrast of the classical mind, a mind of a maestro that has left an indelible mark in musical history.
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Yngwie Malmsteen PHOTO GALLERY
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Yngwie Malmsteen Set List: Rising Force; World on Fire; Top Down/No Rest; Into Valhalla/ Baroque & Roll; Blue Lightning; Soldier; Like an Angel (for April); Badinerie (Bach Cover); Paganini’s 4th/ Adagio; Far Beyond the Sun; Seventh Sign;Overture/From A Thousand Cuts/Arpeggios from Hell;Now Your Ships Are Burned; Evil Eye; Trilogy Suite Op: 5; Guitar Solo;Demon’s Eye (Deep Purple cover); Fugue; Drum Solo;You Don’t Remember, I’ll Never Forget; ENCORE: Black Star; I’ll See The Light Tonight
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