Sophia
De Nachten

"Today is my daughter's birthday, she's four years old..."

Robin Proper-Sheppard, at the end of this concert, asks the audience to sing "Happy Birthday", thus revealing a somewhat lesser-known glimpse of his life: that of a rather ironic and affectionate character. The tension, extremely strong throughout the succession of songs and wrapped in the apparent silence of an audience seemingly immersed in listening to what is not a "traditional" rock concert, is softened by the audience's choir at the end: it seems more like the performance of a Singer-songwriter accompanied by an electro-acoustic group, with guitars, strings, piano, and drums.

The opening with "The Sea" has dark and melancholic colors but in their own way, changing, and the guitar and string melodies in minor immediately establish the poetic atmosphere, dominated by the high lyrical tension that will envelop the entire performance. It is an unreleased piece, one of the most precious hidden gems that Sophia offers the Dutch (and not only) audience for the first time:

"come to the sea my darling
come to the sea my love
follow me my angel
from the darkness of our world"

a love song, splendid and heartrending in its simplicity. It is followed by "Ship In The Sand", another unreleased piece, where the narrative attention shifts to an existential theater, metaphorically a more softly resigned than dramatic staging of life's turmoils

"woke up this morning
thought I got to change my life
I'm like a ship in the sand
just waiting for the tide".

Suite for acoustic guitar, piano, and strings, pervaded by less dark and dramatic melancholy than the first composition, another masterpiece of poetry in music, and music in poetry.

The next two songs, "So Slow" and "If Only", taken from the two albums released so far "Fixed Water" and "The Infinite Circle", the first even more heartrending and anguished live, slower and almost without the percussive cadence that originally characterized it, the second warm, enveloping, and tender, both with broader and more expansive harmonic arrangements, reveal what was already noted at the time for Proper-Sheppard's original group: in the live dimension, they reach unimaginable heights of intensity and at the same time virtuosity. This applies to the vocal parts, as well as the absolute perfection of the arrangements and instrumental performances.

With "Bad Man", marked by an almost unsettling piano solo, the rhythm strengthens, and the first percussions appear. The following "I Left You", with a title all too explicit about the theme addressed, unfolds on a sumptuous musical backdrop, now minor melody and soft rhythm, now with an opening of infinite horizon, sad yet bright, between hope and resignation, showcasing all the instruments: it almost seems like an anthem, an invocation, a quiet reflection... It resembles the inner book of each of our lives, delicately leafed through by the wind of an oceanic shore and semi-submerged by the sand, or read by our own eyes, which are the eyes of the Poet who read, recounted, and ultimately wrote it.

"Jealous Guy", a cover of John Lennon's song, more electric and serene, with Robin's voice seeming to shine like a sunbeam on a dewdrop, with slide guitar and piano, eases the tension that had reached its peak in the previous piece. The grand finale is entrusted to "The River Song": sabbatic, explosive, and reiterated, obsessive just as the compositions of Proper-Sheppard's original band were.

"The Poet is the one who tells what is inside you, not inside him".