It was the most pleasant performance I have yet heard from him.
Mozart's lightweight Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra (K. 299) received a pleasant performance with Jacques Zoon (flute) and Letizia Belmondo (harp) as soloists.
But her pleasant performance was soon overshadowed by allegations of plagiarism.
Connick called it a "pleasant performance" but said Sam needed to change things up in terms of "emotional dynamics".
"Very pleasant performances, with flawless studio musicianship," wrote Lee Hartsfeld of Heath, Ohio, an enthusiastic reviewer on Amazon.com, adding with understatement, "This is one CD that not everyone else on the block is going to own".
Bell called theirs "the most surprising pleasant performances of the night" and added "I absolutely adored these two".
She does a perfectly pleasant vocal performance held aloft by big backing vox and strummed guitars.
In his stead, Miroslav Dvorsky sang Gabriele in a nice, capable voice without much brightness or "ping": it was a pleasant pastel performance.
A very different encounter with language comes in Jamie Atherton's Possibilities for a Pleasant Outing, a "performance memoir" of dancer Fred Herko who, while almost forgotten now, was once a bright-burning star of the New York avant-garde.
But much of the pre-encore part of the concert was frustratingly unremarkable, with a soulless, detached rendition of Schubert's Sonata in E flat (D. 568) and a pleasant but unmemorable performance of Brahms's Six Pieces for Piano (Op. 118).
The change in guest list is illustrative of this: bigger names (Norah Jones, Snoop Dogg, the wearyingly ubiquitous Emeli Sandé) delivering pleasant but undemanding performances instead of the formidable vocal creativity displayed on Volume 1 by Meshell Ndegeocello, Ledisi and Bilal.
