{"id":3562,"date":"2025-11-09T12:49:04","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T12:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/09\/matt-maltese-and-cornelia-murr-play-the-fillmore-in-detroit\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T12:49:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T12:49:12","slug":"matt-maltese-and-cornelia-murr-play-the-fillmore-in-detroit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/09\/matt-maltese-and-cornelia-murr-play-the-fillmore-in-detroit\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Maltese and Cornelia Murr play the Fillmore in Detroit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>I always love shows at The Fillmore Detroit. Smaller artists mean smaller crowds and, when Matt Maltese (<em>Hers<\/em>) comes to town, a smaller stage. On a Friday night in October, Maltese stepped onto a softly lit stage, stepped behind his piano and the theater darkened to him, his croon, his energy.<\/p>\n<p>Before Maltese and his incredible shrinking act, though, our night started with Cornelia Murr\u2019s (<em>Run to the Center<\/em>) opening set. As Murr softly bounced between whistling through her tracks and saxophone solos, the friend I attended the show with whispered, \u201cThis is sexy AF.\u201d When the vocals started, the crowd was spellbound by her cool tempos and fading falsetto. Murr channeled the energy of Dora Jar (<em>Digital Meadow<\/em>) as she meandered through \u201cHow Do You Get By,\u201d \u201cPushing East\u201d and a few covers. As she jammed out, two gym-short-wearing guys in the crowd, who I can only describe as \u201cnonchalant,\u201d silently nodded their heads in unison. Yeah. Murr\u2019s got the power \u2014 speaking softly, carrying a large maraca.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the break between her set and Maltese, spurred on by my nonchalant fellas, I people-watched a bit from the pit. Couples, a pair of friends in birthday hats and \u201980s sweater-clad men filled in. Wandering by the merchandise stand, I noted with an eye roll the \u201cYearning University\u201d hoodie being sold. Reluctantly taking back up my place in the back of the pit, I prepared myself as Maltese walked out with his boyish cut, took his spot at the center-stage piano and began to pluck into the first few, sparse lines of \u201cAlways Some MF.\u201d His voice cut through the theater, a low and unaccompanied croon that floated through the silent crowd. Then, the saxophone came in, and sound filled the venue. The warm glow of the stage mirrored the effect of his building lyrics and crashing choruses. The couples embraced. The nonchalant men started to bounce their heads faster.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He played \u201cBuses Replace Trains,\u201d and, after informing us that the \u201ctube\u201d is the United Kingdom\u2019s version of the subway (and is, in fact, better), went into \u201cCurl Up and Die.\u201d It was a slower, heartbeat of a song \u2014 Declan McKenna, declawed. Maltese banged this part of the set out on the piano, obscured by the dark heads of the crowd, band rising up behind him. Despite the full-bodied chorus of instruments filling the venue (even the clarinet made an appearance!), Maltese\u2019s voice remained the focus of the show. One slow love ballad after another, the crowd continued to grow louder, sway a bit more, with each successive song \u2014 evidently, the intensity was picking up. There wasn\u2019t much in his performance to prove it, though. He remained behind his piano, pounding out one song after another, eyes closed, stage shut.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>About 45 minutes in, mic stands were pulled out. Maltese warned that we were in for another love song, quipping that they hadn\u2019t played many of those already \u2014sarcastically, of course; everyone had seen the \u201cYearning University\u201d merchandise. Murr joined him on stage and they sang together. Maltese stepped up to his mic, but Murr and him hardly faced each other, lost in their intoned worlds, the crowd invited in only so far as their harmonies could reach us. After, Maltese returned to his bench.<\/p>\n<p>When we found ourselves in the middle of \u201cIrony Would Have It,\u201d I started to get excited. There were guitar solos here. It\u2019s not a song you sway to, but instead bob along with. It puts some pep into your step. But as much as I kept silently begging the man to open up his performance a little\u00a0\u2014 if not in stepping away from the tined soundscapes then in at least stepping away from the piano \u2014 Maltese was glued to those keys and mic, eyes closed, engagement withheld. The internality of his love songs meshed well with a largely pared-back and reclusive performance. But while the crowd was expectant and encouraging, the artist remained unmoved.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>By far the most engaging moments of the night came from the final few songs. Maltese jokingly revealed his plan to overtake the most famous version of \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d with his song, inviting one of the birthday-hat-clad friends onto the stage where we sang \u201cHappy Birthday\u201d to birthday-hat friend (David). Maltese then played \u201cLike a Fish\u201d and a couple other songs from his most recent album. \u201cCure for Emptiness\u201d and \u201cAnytime, Anyplace, Anyhow\u201d were welcome breaks from the ballad-y trot we\u2019d been living around up to this point. Finally, Maltese managed to break out of his self-imposed habitat for a few songs. The theater responded in kind, overflowing with gratitude after the obligatory encore call. It was here that Maltese came closest to broadening that stage a bit, connecting with his crowd. The mic stand covering his face seemed less of a barrier between him and the audience, and with \u201cEveryone Adores You (At Least I Do),\u201d a treat of a ballad, he closed out the show.<\/p>\n<p><em>Senior Arts Editor Cora Rolfes can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/arts\/music\/matt-maltese-shrinks-his-stage-and-doesnt-look-back\/mailto:corolfes@umich.edu\"><em>corolfes@umich.edu<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em> <\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I always love shows at The Fillmore Detroit. Smaller artists mean smaller crowds and, when Matt Maltese (Hers) comes to town, a smaller stage. On a Friday night in October, Maltese stepped onto a softly lit stage, stepped behind his piano and the theater darkened to him, his croon, his energy. Before Maltese and his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[3586,208,3084,3585,2175,3587,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-3562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-cornelia","9":"tag-detroit","10":"tag-fillmore","11":"tag-maltese","12":"tag-matt","13":"tag-murr","14":"tag-play"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3564,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562\/revisions\/3564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}