Event – Prowse at 60
Date – 24th July 2024
Venue – Music Room
Reviewer – Alan O’Hare
Summation: noun; the process of adding things together.
It was all about the numbers this week on Hope Street, as Ian Prowse celebrated his 60th birthday with three duo shows inside Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall.
How do you complete a sum while you’re still counting? It’s a tough equation, but a one that can only be solved if one and one equals three.
Popular performer Prowse made all of this add up at the first of his sold-out shows in The Music Room by finding the right way to fuse the past and present to create something new.
Drawing inspiration from the record-breaking Springsteen on Broadway, the singer/songwriter used narration, musical interlude, contextual song introduction and the best of his back catalogue to tell the story of his life to a rapt room.
From a council estate in an overflow town to artistic acclaim from peers such as Elvis Costello and Christy Moore, the show mined deep into Prowse’s past as we bore witness to a singer/songwriter stepping from behind the veil to open the musical vein.
Beside The Fields, Understanding Sadness, Home and his most famous song Does This Train Stop On Merseyside all left track marks on a night that entered the bloodstream of those watching and altered the colour of their emotions.
The bespoke Hope Street venue has never looked or sounded better as mood lighting, scene-setting string introductions from violinist and arranger Laura Macmillan and the singer’s storytelling gave the new(ish) room gravitas and grandeur.
Great songs also help and Prowse once again proved, from 1992’s Fair Blows The Wind For France to 2022’s Battle, that he’s richer than ever before in that currency.
What next? Prowse at 60 wasn’t about that… it was about a summing up. But it did prove something to those fans with one eye on the future: this is an artist who can be counted upon.
Review © 2024 Alan O’Hare / Images © 2024 Theresa Curran