Led Zeppelin Masters Review
featuring Vince Contarino & the Black Dog Orchestra
Cliffs Pavilion, Southend on Sea
26th April 2017

Led Zeppelin are usually categorised as classic rock, but really their music was more than that. It incorporated blues, folk, hard rock and they are credited with being responsible for heavy metal. Metal and classical music may seem like strange bedfellows, but in fact the roots of heavy music can be linked to Baroque composers like Bach and Wagner who inspired the like of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath.

Metallica famously and successfully collaborated with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra in the late nineties with impressive results. This no doubt would have inspired Vince Contarino and his band of Zep Boys to collaborate with the 'Black Dog' Orchestra in order to do something that hasn't been done before. 

I approached this event with high hopes, as I was too young to have seen Zeppelin in their day, and too poor to see them when they reunited briefly in 2007. This was as near as I would get to seeing the real thing. 

First of all Contarino's voice deserves a mention, as it is as powerful an instrument as any in the orchestra. He delivered a vocal tour de force of Zeppelin classics, and this band would have impressed without the orchestra, as the musicianship was flawless. The core of the group has been together thirty years and it shows as they are as tight as a knot.

However the thirty-five strong orchestra  brings something special to the performance. Their sound complimented the four piece beautifully and seamlessly, for both the melodic numbers such as 'Going to California' and 'All of my Love' to the more thunderous and explosive 'Immigrant Song' 

The house was unsurprisingly brought down with the universal appeal of 'Stairway to Heaven'. The seasoned audience rolled back the years to be on their feet by the end of the encore which reached a heady climax with 'A Whole Lotta Love'. It might as well have been 1975 again. This was a show worth seeing, a must for fans of Led Zeppelin, both young and old.

​For more information and to keep up to date with all of the Led Zeppelin Masters gigs, click on the links below!
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Reviewer: James Harrington
Photo Credits: Stephen Hawke

Photos from Southend's Cliffs Pavilion gig on 26th April 2017 taken exclusively by Stephen Hawke for Southend Theatre Scene