We attended the show at the Queen Elizabeth Show in Vancouver on November 26, 2023. There is no debating that these four men can sing, whether it is opera, pop or crooning. They all have incredible voices.
Unfortunately, the first 10 or 15 minutes of the show was marred by terrible balance problems with the sound system, to the point that a couple of the singers voices were barely (or not at all) audible at times during the first two or three songs. It also seemed that their ear-pieces were giving them trouble all night. Eventually, the balance problem was sorted out, but they were clearly unhappy about it and the earpiece thing must have been very challenging for them. How that happens when they must have run a sound check earlier is beyond me.
We also noticed that, in some cases at least, a performer's mic would be turned off when he was not singing for a short time during a song, and then there would be a short delay when he started singing again before his mic level came back up. Someone was apparently asleep at the soundboard.
Beyond that, the Christmas songs were good, as were The Prayer and Hallelujah at the end. In between, the banter was okay, but these guys are not as funny or adorable as they think. The "Best of Michael Bublé and Motown"medley felt like weak filler. Bringing out Clifton's reluctant four year old son came over as more desperate than sweet (although that little boy IS very cute). And, given each member of the quartet has a unique voice and is, essentially, a soloist, their blend is not great when singing harmony.
As far as costuming goes, we were not keen on the "shorty"sport-jacket look that three of them wore. That style just doesn't suit middle-aged (or almost middle-aged) men. Also, three of them wore sharp looking patent leather shoes, which made Clifton's regular leather ones look shabby even though there were not in any way beat up. And there was not a single costume change throughout, even at intermission. At one point, the band/orchestra played the theme from A Charlie Brown Christmas and we figured it was so the quartet could make a costume change...but we were wrong. They came back out after that without so much as a Christmas scarf added, which left us wondering why an orchestra break was needed at all.
The orchestral ensemble from Vancouver performed well with The Tenors' own band. Unfortunately, however, we could barely hear the large-ish local choir group most of the time. Again, that seems like a mic-ing problem. We weren't sure if the Queen Elizabeth Theatre was responsible for that, or The Tenors' own sound people.
Overall, we thought the show seemed a bit lazy and not that carefully thought out. They started and finished with Christmas songs (and The Prayer and Hallelujah), largely from their new album - the concert tour is obviously to promote that. But in between, they just threw in a bit of this and that from their repertoire.
In the end, we were glad we went, never having seen The Tenors live before. Like I say, they have fantastic voices, and who doesn't love hearing a good tenor letting it rip! But the feeling we were left with is that they are higher on themselves than they ought to be, and are just not particularly likeable (not to say that a few fans, some of whom were clearly insiders, weren't wild for them). I don't think that is fixable.
