Ready to mesmerize

Ishara JAYAWARDANE

Billy in performance Pictures by Shaan Panagoda

He is well known among the Gospel Sector of the music industry. His first band was Ezra, winner of TNL Onstage 2002. His face radiates a handsome warmth because he can sense it in the air, he can almost smell it. Something is coming. He can almost feel it. Music is Billy Fernando’s calling in life. It is the driving force in his life. The love of his life. And his upcoming concert is the first of a series of Billy Fernando Live in Concerts.

“Main thing is, I would say it is different from the concerts I generally have. The difference is, I and the whole team are giving preference to musicality. Show biz wise there is a lot of entertainment involved but it is not another show where you want people to scream and dance because there is a lot of skill involved. So that would be the biggest difference and I’m also singing altogether in three languages. Mostly Sinhalese, English as well as Spanish,” said Billy.

Altogether there will be about 20 songs in the concert. About 15 are original songs and about five are covers. “Amongst the originals, ‘Yuwathiya’ and ‘Kello Kollo’ are the songs that are known.

These two I will definitely perform. Other than that there will be three singles that I have not yet released, so the day of the concert will be the day of the release of these three singles. Also I will be doing all the singles I have released after my Yuwathiya Album. There are six singles. One of these is the latest song I did which is called ‘Ayubowan Mage Menika'. I did this with Devashrie de Silva. I will also be doing a Latin Song segment.”

Fernando also said that the Listeners will grasp a lot of different senses of musical emotions. It is not only beat based. Most of the music and concerts around Colombo are very beat based.

But it is very rare that you will go to a concert and admire the real talent coming out of a musician. So Billy and his team hope to give that in this concert.

“Up until now I’ve been doing loads of guest spots. What happens in the guest spots is that they want the most hit songs. So you end up doing the same three songs all your life. For the past 3-4 years what I’ve been doing is playing the most hit songs and making people dance.

I have done 10 Solo concerts and after Yuwathiya Album launch, this is my third solo concert.

I have been doing other concerts as well with three or four artists. Organizing a concert like this takes a lot of time and effort. other than the musical aspect, the organizing aspect, putting the whole concert together and advertising and so on is quite a task. But we still enjoy the music aspect,” explained Billy.

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