Funk, R&B, alternative rock, and jazz; Cory Wong and his band mixed it all perfectly with an electrifying performance on Monday night at College Street Music Hall in New Haven.
Couch opened the night with a short 45-minute set of ten songs opening with “Still Feeling You” straight into “Saturday,” two songs that fans of the band will recognize while also highlighting their upbeat energy to any audience members that were unfamiliar.
After setting the energy for the show, they gave the audience a peak at an unreleased song that still has no name before they performed one of their two covers of the set in “Sorry” by Justin Bieber, with the trumpet and saxophone sounds of Jeffery Pinsker-Smith and Eric Tarlin, providing a fresh take on the radio hit.
The band continued their set with two more fan favorites in “Poems” and “Jessie” before an instrumental version of “Let Me Hold You” with a trumpet solo, a fresh take on one of the band’s newer releases from their EP “Sunshower.”
The band then performed their second and final cover of their set with a funky rendition of Schoolhouse Rock’s “Conjunction Junction” before playing another one of their newer releases in “(I Wanted) Summer With You.”
Couch then wrapped up their set with their most popular song “Easy to Love,” concluding an energetic and entertaining set. Singer Tema Siegel does a fantastic job fronting the band, bouncing around the stage really bringing the energy and the band’s chemistry is easy to see. Couch’s set gave the audience a taste of everything the band has to offer, while also setting the stage for Cory Wong and his band.
Cory Wong and his band took the stage wearing matching spacesuit-like jumpsuits with a “Wongair” logo on the back in reference to his latest album “Starship Syncopation,” with all the band members in black and Wong in light blue. Wong opens his set with an unreleased song of his own, that he later explains was originally written as a theme song for a CBS show that got rejected by the studio. Wong continued the set with “The Grid Generation,” a 2023 release that has been played at many of the shows on this 2024 tour.
Wong’s band for this 2024 tour is full of talent all around including Petra Janjuc on drums, Kevin Gastonguay on Keyboard, a horn section of Dan White, Eddie Barbash, Jay Webb, Kenny Holmen and Michael B. Nelson, Yohannes Tona on Bass, and Mark Lettieri playing guitar alongside Wong himself.
Wong and Lettieri were both members of The Fearless Flyers and recorded a few songs together as a duo. Because of this, the band played two Flyers songs in “Assassin” and “Partouille de France” with one of their other songs “Concrete” in between. They then played one of Lettieri’s solo songs “Tidal Tail” before going back to Cory Wong’s discography with “Direct Flyte.”
Wong then took a moment to recognize Couch and their opening set before welcoming Tema Siegel back onto stage to provide vocals for a few songs. She joined the band for “Call Me Wild” and a distinctive cover of “Ain’t it Fun” by Paramore before leaving stage again.
Wong then spoke about his latest album “Starship Syncopation,” mentioning that he recently recorded an album with an orchestra before playing “Burning,” one of the tracks from the album.
Wong then gave the spotlight back to Mark Lettieri as they played one more of his tracks in “Giganticus,” before rounding up the set with three more Cory Wong tracks in “Brooklyn Bop,” “Merci” and “Meditation.”
However, once the band left the stage, there was an immediate announcement telling the audience to stay for the press conference happening between the performance and the encore, as members of the band set up a table and stools for a live Q&A with the audience.
Wong and his band members then spent about 20 minutes fielding questions from the audience about the performance. While many questions were about solos and decision making when it came to the performance as well as playing in general, some were also more humorous with one fan asking about the New Haven crowd’s ability to clap in time and another asking about their favorite pizza options in the city.
Once the band was done taking questions, they ended the night with a performance of “Lunchtime” from Cory Wong’s 2019 album “Motivational Music for the Syncopated Soul” wrapping up a fantastic funk-filled night.
