A & E

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill

Country music's favorite couple brought the Soul2Soul Tour to a packed Mellon Arena on Tuesday night.

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill performed both together and separately in a flashy show.

Hill -- clad in a beautiful, sparkling white jumpsuit, and back to her original long, blond hair -- sang all of her fans' favorites, and is a delight on stage. The stage was set up as an elevated, four-pronged structure, where the artists could walk very close to the audience on all ends, and both appeared and left through the floor.

Tim McGraw, like he did last year, inexplicably skipped his most memorable song from his more country, honky-tonk days in the '90s, "I Like It, I Love It." But he sang plenty more recent hits -- such as the inspiring smash, "Live Like You Were Dying" -- to make up for it.

McGraw, known for flaunting his well-built muscles with tight clothes and body language, gave many of the eager ladies in the audience just what they wanted. But surely many others besides this reviewer thought the narcissism and flamboyance was a bit over the top. Beating his chest like a gorilla? Please.

The show, overall, was a well-organized delight, and the best moments came when the couple performed duets, like the touching "It's Your Love."

-- Kellie B. Gormly

Impressive solo percussion performances framed the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble's concerts on Friday and Saturday at City Theatre, South Side.

David Skidmore's energy, versatility and hand independence brought "Rebonds" by Iannis Xenakis to life to open a program devoted to "The Traveler." "?Corporel" by Vinko Globukar was the harrowing conclusion to the journey, a piece of performance art in which the performer uses body percussion to portray a tortured soul. I winced when Skidmore hit his skull with his knuckles so loudly the sound was clear 75 feet away.

Pittsburgh composer David Cutler's "Superpower" was an enjoyable escapade in which superheroes fight it out at a grand piano. Staging by the new music ensemble's artistic director Kevin Noe differed from Cutler's intention -- especially effectively when the superheroes stopped action under bright lights and posed a frame from a comic book.

A performance of "Catch" by Thomas Ades suffered from dramatic distraction. The show featured Jeffrey Kash in drag as Ms. Eda Bagel, with material that included legendary English comedian Anna Russell's "Introduction to a Concert." Kash's role didn't fit "Catch," although it was worked into "Superpower" more organically.

Another faux pas was "BYOD" by Randy Wolf, in which the servile potential of a dancer was treated with over-the-top facetiousness.

"The Dream of the Lost Traveler" by Martin Bresnick showed his ability to build a strong piece out of less than impressive materials. But Earl Kim's "Dear Linda" was a thoroughly imaginative and sensitive setting of a poem by Anne Sexton.

-- Mark Kanny

Most of my favorite singers aren't technically very good singers at all -- people like Johnny Cash, Nick Cave and Tom Waits with voices of subtle depth, grit and character.

Then there's Neko Case, with a voice of such staggering, room-filling power, that it makes me think subtlety is overrated. She hit the Byham Theater on Thursday night like a summer storm rolling in over the prairie, with a set full of lightning, creepy shadows and panicked livestock. It's a formula all her own -- take Patsy Cline's immortal country-noir standard "Walking After Midnight," and add more darkness.

She looks like a Nashville star -- a small-boned beauty with a fiery mane of red hair, and she certainly has the voice. But her music is so idiosyncratic, and her songs so dark and strange -- particularly off 2002's stunning "Blacklisted" -- that it's impossible to imagine Case ever making a dent in Nashville.

Bringing a little levity to her "Halloween-y" songs, Case's stage presence is almost comically down-to-earth. In between murder ballads and lovelorn laments, she and her band treated the nearly sold-out crowd to surreal reminisces about junior-high makeout sessions with a guy named "Ronnie," shout-outs to Mr. Rogers -- and Daniel Striped Tiger -- and wonderment at the very fertile-looking naked ladies on the ceiling of the Byham.

Show of the year, so far.

-- Michael Machosky

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