Concert Review : Kina Grannis @ Le P'tit Campus, April 12, 2011

Wow.  Kina Grannis is awesome.  I'm sure this comes as no surprise to her
300,000+ dedicated youtube subscribers.  Before the concert I wasn't very
familiar with Kina other than having seen her in WongFu Productions'
"Funemployed" webisode and hearing a couple of songs, including a duet with
David Choi.  With FEW exceptions, most of my favourite music comes from hip
hop artists.  After experiencing Kina live, she has indeed become one of
those exceptions.

Petit campus was close to capacity that Tuesday evening with the majority of
the crowd in front sitting on the floor during the opening act, a solo
artist named Imaginary Friend (who incidentally doubles as Kina's
merch-table salesman).
His songs were low tempo with pensive
lyrics.  It was great music for a campfire but perhaps veering a bit too
closely to putting me to sleep before the main event.  Of course when Kina
quietly came on stage, everyone stood up.


My impression of Kina was that she had a lot of slower songs but to my
surprise, her repertoire comprised of her more upbeat pieces.  The audience
was treated to lots of original material from her most recent album
Stairwells including Valentine and The Goldfish song.  She even made Britney
and Bieber covers sound not just tolerable but, dare I say, good!  Kina
sounds even better live, where her surprisingly powerful guitar strumming
and strong voice can be truly appreciated, as opposed to her youtube videos.

Can you guess who was first in line at her meet and greet after the show?

I feel sorry for those who went to the Ricky Martin show instead.

Also of note: Beats From The East was scheduled to have a face-to-face
interview with Kina, prior to the show, but due to her schedule changes,
this was not possible. Please stay tuned, however, as we are working on
getting a phone-interview very soon!