It doesn’t get better than this: Ovation Productions will bring Tears for Fears and Per Sørensen, the voice of Fra Lippo Lippi, to Cebu for a concert at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel on August 12, 2012. The artists’ Cebu concert is scheduled two days after their concert at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Manila.
Tears for Fears
The musical group Tears for Fears is essentially the British musicians Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, since they are the front men and public face of the group. The band made their major international breakthrough in 1985 when they released Songs from the Big Chair, the album that contains their most commercially successful material, namely “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” “Head Over Heels” and “Shout.”
Before the album Songs from the Big Chair, Tears for Fears released The Hurting, their first album, in 1983. This album included another one of their most widely recognized songs, “Mad World.” In 2002, this song was included in the Donnie Darko soundtrack. Though the track was performed by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews for the movie, it nonetheless brought the band’s music to the attention of many younger listeners who weren’t old enough to have lived through the band’s glory days in the ’80s.
The Hurting is considered a concept album because nearly every song on the album makes references to primal therapy, which was developed by American psychologist Arthur Janov. The band’s name itself is inspired by primal therapy as it comes from a phrase that’s found in Janov’s book Prisoners of Pain. A slowed-down sample from the title track of The Hurting can be heard in the intro of the 1984 Band Aid single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
Orzabal and Smith had a very harsh quarrel after the release of The Seeds of Love, the band’s third album, in 1989. Fortunately for fans of their musical collaboration, they reconciled their differences in 2001 and later came up with the album Everybody Loves a Happy Ending in 2004. Although Orzabal and Smith were not even speaking to each other at the time, Orzabal decided to release the single “Laid So Low (Tears Roll Down)” in 1992, followed by the albums Elemental (1993) and Raoul and the Kings of Spain (1995) under the band’s name. Smith kept busy during the estrangement with his own band called Mayfield.
Tears for Fears previously had a Southeast Asian tour in April 2010. They performed here in the Philippines and in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Per Sørensen
The other featured artist for the August 12 concert is Per Øystein Sørensen, vocalist of the band Fra Lippo Lippi. His distinctive and expressive voice can be heard on the Norwegian band’s best-known songs like “Every Time I See You,” “Shouldn’t Have to Be Like That” and “Light and Shade.” Even though the band is Norwegian, their name apparently came from Robert Browning’s poem about the Italian friar and painter Fra’ Filippo Lippi.
Per Sørensen didn’t actually become part of Fra Lippo Lippi until the band’s second album. After the band’s keyboardist/vocalist left, Sørensen joined bassist Rune Kristoffersen and drummer Morten Sjøberg, as lead vocalist on Small Mercies. Sjøberg left before the release of the band’s third album, Songs.
Sørensen and Kristoffersen jointly wrote the title song of the band’s fourth album, Light and Shade. This particular song is one of the band’s most played tracks, along with “Angel” and “Beauty and Madness” from the same album.
Fra Lippo Lippi was so popular in the Philippines that they toured our country in 1988, with six sold-out shows in Manila over two weekends. Their live album Crash of Light was released in the Philippines in 1990. In 1997, Fra Lippo Lippi had a compilation album, The Virgin Years: Greatest Hits, again as a Philippine release.
Rune Kristoffersen decided to retire from the band in 2002, so he could focus on his record label. Per Sørensen is the only remaining member of Fra Lippo Lippi, though he also released some Norwegian-language music using his own name, as a solo artist.
The ticket prices for the upcoming event featuring Tears for Fears and Per Sørensen are as follows:
Patron VIP – Php6,500
Patron regular – Php5,500
Lower box equivalent – Php3,500
Upper A equivalent – Php2,500
Upper B equivalent – Php2,000
General admission – Php1,000
For more information about this concert, you may call the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel phone number (032)232-6888 or mobile number (0917)622-8705. You could also check out Ovation Productions’ Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/ovationproductions for relevant announcements about the event.
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