Giuseppe Craca provides the images for Music Attitude's coverage of YES's concert performance on May 8, 2024 at Gran Teatro GEOX.

Also check out Franco Mannocci's great photo album of YES playing in Padova for Rockol.it: [Link]

Gianpaolo Bonzio - Il Gazzettino

Sunday, May 12, 2024 2:38 PM

[GOOGLE TRANSLATE from original Italian to English]:

Gianpaolo Bonzio

A timeless creativity, Yes enchant the PalaGeox

Sunday 12 May 2024

The Yes concert in Padua

PADUA, Steve Howe 's guitar is not lost in time and continues to enlighten his audience. A phrasing that recalls times gone by, but which maintains a breath and a refined lyrical power. And that even at the Pala Geox he was able to keep the attention of those who appreciate this creativity high. That of Yes is a repertoire that appears truly timeless and has attracted a vast audience in Padua, mostly made up of sixty-year-olds, who never cease to follow with great affection and participation the productions of the band now completed by the keyboardist Geoff Downes, the singer Jon Davison, bassist Billy Sherwood and drummer Jay Shellen. the result of the group's cohesion was also intriguing, just think of the difficult role played by singer Jon Davison, while Downes once again appeared solid and effective.

The music begins with “Machine Messiah”, “It'll Be A Good Day” and “Going For The One”, so to speak, but it is towards the middle of the concert that Howe, at the height of his 77 years, demonstrates what kind of stuff is made especially with a successful elaboration of the inevitable “Don't Kill The Whale”. For fans it is certainly not a surprise, but finding the band in this state of health, after a long absence from the theaters, is still encouraging. Thus the historical pieces of the past are paraded which prove, as Downes had confided to us when presenting the Padua event, still solid and in some ways timeless.

Howe alternates the frenzy of the electric guitar with paths closer to English folk with the acoustic instrument as is in the band's recording tradition.

After about two hours the Greox pala explodes with the unmissable "Roundabout", one of the historic gems of the English band, a fusion of styles and rhythms as well as a strong piece of that album, "Fragile", a decisive stage in an enviable production. The year was 1971.