In the 15th season of the reality-singing program "X Factor Britain", an interesting debate developed between the veteran judge Simon Cowell, and the newcomer to the judging panel - Robbie Williams.
Cowell commented to one of the contestants that she "didn't get all the notes right", which touched a nerve with Williams.
The latter responded with a protest: "But she was accurate in most of the notes!".
Robbie continued and gave an example from his professional life: "This is my job. If I manage to get 75% of the notes right, I know I had a good performance."
It was an interesting philosophical debate, one that is rare to find in reality shows on commercial channels.
A gathering battle between the perfectionist precision demanded by the reality show judges, and the realistic flexibility of the experienced pop legend, who knows what the audience is really looking for in a performance, and that is exactly the X factor, which is beyond any vocal precision.
I was reminded of this debate yesterday during a performance by another X Factor judge, Miri Mesika, who gave a 100% accurate performance at the Culture Hall in Tel Aviv.
Miri Mesika (Photo: Aya Zach)
In fact, if we are talking about accuracy, then it should be precise and noted that her accuracy was accurate for 25 out of 26 songs performed in the concert.
Even when she put Rita on stage, and didn't even bother to hide her excitement at sharing the stage with a diva she grew up with - Miri Mesika never dropped from 100% for a moment.
She would turn every chair, lift every curtain, and the judges in every program would be eager to add her to their team.
A combination of talent, grace and professionalism.
Then, after Sarita got off the stage, deep into the last part of the show, Mesika performed "Fearful of You", and missed one of the high notes.
For artists who perform with auto-tune, it was not noticeable at all, but Mesika does not need artificial aids to stay in the game, on the contrary - her authenticity makes her such a mesmerizing performer.
It's a difficult song to perform, certainly live, and the challenge brings out the best in Miska.
Moments after her only miss in the show, the vocals go to rapper Izzy (whose voice is played in playback and his face is projected on the screens), then Mesika takes a breath and returns to the zone.
She is 100% accurate from this moment until the end of the show.
It's so impressive, and Masika makes it look so easy.
For the avoidance of doubt: it is so not.
She's probably a really good actress.
Miri Mesika (Photo: Aya Zach)
In the end, this is the first thought that comes out of Miri Masika's performance: this is a singer who sings really well.
really really good
You can argue about the quality of her songs and her stage pathos, which seems to be still stuck in the mode of a musical in London's West End - but you can't argue about her ability to take a microphone and sing any song like it's the only thing she wants to do on earth.
The fact that she has so much fun doing the thing she's so good at just makes it all the more fun to watch.
This musical perfectionism fits her as well as the black gloves she wears on her hands and the black dress by the designer Alon Livna, which I almost wrote was "sexy", but in the current climate I'm not sure that such comments are allowed even on clothing details.
In another era, I might have complimented the external performance of the singer herself, from a pure place of an objective observer from the stands, but fortunately we all live in a more advanced time, one that examines events in a vacuum and under sterile laboratory conditions.
As if a beautiful dress by a creative designer can't turn a fine performance into an unforgettable one, without any sexual connotations or objectification.
In any case, not only the dress was sexy but the whole stage, which was designed in a kind of fusion of a flamenco show in Madrid, a strip club in Vegas and the Matmata caves in Tunisia.
In addition to Masika's large band, two female dancers also joined the stage, adding positive visual confusion to the stage.
On the face of it, it sounds busy and ornate, but the end result was beautiful and refined, with beautiful games of light and shadow that affected the large hall of the Culture Hall, and brought out many exclamations of admiration from the audience.
Miri Masika and Rita (Photo: Aya Zach)
As with many creators, Miri Mesika's first album became a kind of positive burden on the stylist.
That big album, which catapulted her to the status of one of the biggest stars in the country in 2005, is still her perfect hits collection, and the one that the audience is probably still waiting for the most.
It's a familiar feeling from performances by Avitar Banai, Shlomi Shaban or the Jews.
The artists progress, become more complex, deeper - and the audience wants the old and immature.
The combination of six songs from that great album felt absolutely reasonable, as did the end of the show, which consisted of three songs from that album - "November", "Leshem" and "Shir Tikva" that sealed the evening.
The show opened with six songs from different periods of Mesika's career, in a very serious, almost operatic atmosphere.
Those who know Mesika's very chatty stage persona - who arguably missed out on an equally successful stand-up career - must not have understood what happened to the almost neighborhood performer, who suddenly became aloof and reserved in an uncharacteristic way.
Six songs without stopping and talking to the audience?
What, a few months in London and she turned cold British?
Then, after "Come to you" dedicated to her parents who were sitting in the audience, the bond of silence (premeditated) was broken and Masika seemed to change character, turning from Miri from the West End to Miri from the block.
Masika and Rita (Photo: Aya Zach)
She presented a stunning new song called "Haht at Night", which was composed to the words that Assi Dayan wrote in an email while he was hospitalized in the psychiatric hospital in Geha.
Later she gave the apparently feminist take to Natan Alterman's "Singer of the Three Answers";
Harbitza Torah with Meir Ariel's "How Sometimes I Am" and stepped into the huge shoes of Barbra Streisand and Billie Holiday with "My Man".
Even when she switched to singing in Arabic "Lamoni" by the Tunisian Di Jouini, it felt so close and right.
It turned out that precisely in the sections where she performs other people's songs (as well as in duets with Rita), Mesika reveals herself at her peak as a performer - who can, as the cliché goes, make any song her own.
Surprisingly, in her songs, the arrangements sometimes felt like she was trying to be what she wasn't, for example in "Leshem" which had a kind of clever Spanish rhythm, and suddenly it didn't feel like Masika's signature song.
There were several highlights in the show, including the performance of the song "Omer Sharif" from the musical "Visit of the Orchestra", which quotes classical Arab musical moves, including from "Inta Omari" by Umm Kulthum.
This is Mesika's first performance in Israel since she returned from London, where she played the lead role in the musical.
"There I was just a figure on a stage and people came to see the figure, here I am in the form of myself and you still come to see," she said in a moment of genuine modesty.
Masika (photo: Aya Zach)
Another peak moment surprisingly came precisely in "Shir for Shira", the same old cover she did for Yonatan Geffen's masterpiece from the book "The 16th Lamb", which Korin Alel composed somewhere in the heart, many, many years ago.
I don't think I've heard Masika's version of the song since it came out on her first album.
To be honest, I didn't like him very much in real time.
I felt that it lacked that specific charm that Korin Elel brought to the song, which made it an uncoverable song.
Masika didn't try to reinvent the song, but this time she sang it from a mother's point of view.
It's the same song, the same words, the same voice and even the exact same singer - but in a performance where the fourth wall is broken from the very first scene, the feeling is that the audience becomes part of Mesika's extended family (which seems to occupy a quarter of the hall anyway).
We know the woman on stage.
At this point in the show, she is our sister, our daughter or our aunt.
When she sings "Shir for Shira" this time it feels like she is bringing us into her intimate moment.
We are with her in the room as she sings a lullaby to her babies.
She does what music does best.
She lets us relax.
Finds us a refuge from the troubles of the world, protects us from the ugliness outside.
In the current period it is the most expensive commodity there is.
in the small
Every artist who goes on stage in Israel these days, certainly in Tel Aviv, has to decide if he is referring to the political situation in the country or not.
A week and a half after she was a guest at Shlomi Shaban's sensational show at the Opera House, Mesika knew exactly what the price of such a statement could lead to.
If she speaks against the legal revolution, she may still find herself on the grill of Shimon Riklin, Yanon Magal and the like.
If you say nothing, it can be interpreted as indifference to the situation, or simply in support of the reform (a completely legitimate thing, by the way).
Masika, who probably learned a lesson in diplomacy from the English after all, chose not to completely ignore the situation, and found a middle ground - to simply laugh at the situation.
She told, seemingly unnecessarily, the story of the play "Matchikunat", in the end of which Omar Sharif's character goes to prison after he embezzles money.
"This is what we used to do to people who were tricked by money," she adds dryly, receiving thunderous applause from the audience.
You don't have to be left-handed to laugh at a good joke that is executed with perfect timing.
It was a check of conclusion.
small
gentle
Prickly - and hits the mark.
Call me sexist, but there are things women just do better.
culture
Tags
Miri Mesika
Rita
