Don't forget to search and review the 234 Folk, Acoustic, Blues concerts using the archive search function! (And more each week it looks like from the schedule.) It comes up only five concerts at a time-- I am going to e-mail them and request a full list of that genre's archives to post here. If I get it I will post it here in the thread, and then after that date try to keep the list of folk events current.

If you register to be an E-Patron, look out for error messages once you enter your info, that are not actually errors. It kept telling me that usernames and e-mail addy's I offered were already taken and/or that e-mails had already been sent to me giving me the sign-in info and to use that-- so now I have four memberships! Wait for your e-mail if you get one of these error messages before trying another registration entry-- chances are it took you the first time.

We watched half of two different items last night-- a rockin' gospel concert and a classical violin-piano duo. The latter had been billed as jazz and were not (because one them also does appear in other Millenium Stage concerts in jazz bands), but it was worth watching anyhow.

The video quality is better than Mudcat Radio in terms of set quality and fixed camera mounts, lighting and all that, but they look like they have been shot with much the same technology-- remember the older Radio shows where the people jumped around like a slide show? The older concerts are like that and the newer ones are like the much-smoother Radio shows now.

The sound was pretty good, not as good as archived proferssional radio or a CD but pretty good-- certainly better than PalTalk. It will depend on your system's sound, too, of course.

In terms of concert quality, I think it will vary. The violin-piano duo were really GOOD. The gospel choir was OK but the soloist wasn't half as good as most non-gigging Mudcatters I have heard. (So Mudcat could take over the Millenium Stage!)

Because of the video quality we found it best to watch it one of two ways-- if you are at the keyboard, watch it small for increased clarity. Or else make it full screen and pull up a recliner at your usual TV-viewing distance.

We both enjoyed it a lot but we had a good laugh over trying to learn bowing refinements from a slide show. *G*

~Susan