I zipped through this last night and thought it was pretty great. The second set and encore are both utterly fantastic, for the most part. I got chills watching the orchestra play the middle section of Illumination Theory. The performance of that entire song was pretty much amazing.
I was a little disappointed by how non-enthusiastic the crowd looked at times, and as usual, Rudess had to wank up some sections that didn't need it (like that noise at the end of The Mirror...ugh), but those are minor quibbles.
While I have no doubt that some "work" was done on JLB's vocals
, overall he sounded very good. I always go in knowing that his voice is gonna be kind of hit or miss for me, but there were few instances that bugged me. Good to see he's doing what he can to sound good live despite his advancing age.
Overall, it gets
from me.