Review: LAU NOAH AND LIOR – ADELAIDE GUITAR FESTIVAL 2025 at Her Majesty's Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre

Sunday 14th September 2025

Reviewed by Ray Smith, Sunday 14th September 2025.

As my guest and I mingled with the crowd in the foyer of Her Majesty's Theatre, waiting to see Lau Noah and Lior, we both acknowledged that we knew nothing of either of their works. I had read that Noah had worked with Jacob Collier, and that was the main reason that I was keen to hear her work, after attending Collier's brilliant concert at the very same venue just 3 months earlier.

We took to our seats as the rest of the audience slowly filed in to almost fill the available seats. It was not a sold-out show, but there was still a decent crowd made up of a very diverse age range, from children to old folks like me.

Lau Noah took the stage with the assistance of a guitar tech, and I noted that her nylon string cutaway acoustic had 3 amplification systems. A built-in pickup, a goose neck electret microphone on the guitar body and a free-standing microphone pointed at the sound hole area.

The first piece she played sounded very strange, and I surmised that it was the free-standing microphone picking up the mumble and clatter of her picking hand at a ridiculously high level.

The second piece had a clearer and crisper sound, presumably because the audio engineer had returned from the toilet and had turned the offending microphone down.

Noah's style is very Spanish. Not in a flamenco/compás sort of way. but with very fast right-hand picking and the left hand flicking over the fretboard from the first fret to the 15th in a flurry of arpeggios.

My guest, a mean guitar player in her own right, pointed out afterwards that it was the same arpeggio played at different sections of the neck but that, notwithstanding, it was a very effective and engaging technique as the notes were often played in unison with Noah's vocal lines.

Her presentation was folksy, intimate and quietly understated, and she used a technique of audience engagement that I have seen used before to great effect by players such as Tom Paxton and Ry Cooder.

She began to tell a story, in this instance a fairytale, by setting the scene and then launching into a song, the introduction of the story still in the audience's mind. Between songs, she would add more to the tale, always leaving the narrative at a point of intrigue to once again begin a song. It worked beautifully.

The songs themselves were quite short and avoided the usual verse/chorus structure, rather flowing naturally in a continuous narrative, Noah's voice rising and falling in decorative undulations that once again screamed Spanish.

There was nothing particularly Collieresque in her delivery other than dividing the audience into 2 parts and asking each half of the audience to sing in counterpoint to each other. The parts themselves were a little complex and involved some of the undulations that she had demonstrated in the earlier pieces, and though the audience groaned at the prospect of singing these lines themselves, it worked quite well.

I later said to my guest that I found many of the pieces surprisingly short, and her response was that good art can sometimes be quite small. This was good art. It wasn't mind blowing, but rather comfortable and presented with a delicate nuance of familiarity and humbleness.

There was an intermission before Lior took to the stage. Lior was accompanied by his full band and is described in the festival blurb as “Australia's beloved Lior” and “a guitar craftsman of exquisite skill.” He was presenting works from his newest album, Blue Parade, and his opening gambit was a song from that new album. This is an album that I will never buy.

I found the first song underwritten and overplayed, with a jangly soft pop feel that was thoroughly irritating. The audience loved it.

Lior said that he did not know why he was included in a guitar festival, since he saw himself first as a singer, then as a songwriter and finally as a guitarist. I agree with him on the first point. His voice is rather bland but has a soaring range up into the higher registers, which is where it spends most of its time.

The song itself was uninspired and resultantly uninspiring. I found the lyrics lacking and the melody predictable. Ending a vocal line on a fourth has been in use since the Middle Ages. The guitar playing was adequate, and once again I had to agree with him, since I too did not know why he was included in a guitar festival.

The second song was apparently from an album recorded decades ago, and it sounded pretty much identical to the first. The audience loved it. There are some truly great guitarists in Australia, but this is not one of them. By the third or fourth song, it was difficult to tell them apart, I got up and left.

Australia - Adelaide Awards - Live Stats

Best Musical - Top 3

1. BONNIE AND CLYDE (The Arts Theatre)

24.3% of votes

2. COME FROM AWAY (The Arts Theatre)

23.1% of votes

3. BILLY ELLIOT (Northern Light Theatre Company)

17.6% of votes

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