Ms. Manchester put it into high gear from the moment she took the stage and never took her foot off the throttle the whole night.  By the time she took a break about halfway through her set, we were ready, but only to catch our breath and stare at each other with our mouths open.

Besides her high energy, beautiful vocals, and wonderfully familiar songs, she also had great company on stage.  Sue Holder, her back up vocalist / road manager added her own special ‘flavor’ to the mix, along with guitarist / keyboardist Stephan Oberhoff, an accomplished artist in his own right.

She played some 15 songs, including her most popular hits, Midnight Blue & Don’t Cry Out Loud.

She also had an ‘added touch’ to her show, a prop on stage, that I had never seen at Dosey Doe before.  Standing in the corner, stage left, was a stand alone screen much like the one we’d take out when I was a kid to view the family vacation slides.  It was distracting until she started performing and even then I continued to wonder what she was planning to do with it.  The speculation ended when a video came on of the singer performing many years ago.  Then Melissa Manchester, live and in person, began to accompany herself!  She sang along in perfect sync to the newcomer Melissa on the screen.

And if that wasn’t fun enough, her pal Barry Manilow was next up.  He greeted her, she greeted him, and they sang a duet of a medley of tunes.  It was very effective and entertaining.  It truly felt almost like he was there!

I guess by now you can tell that I thought she was magnificent.  Proof positive… I took over 1700 images (versus my normal couple of hundred).  Thank you Melissa Manchester for a beautiful and inspired show & thank you Dosey Doe for having the brilliance to book her!