The Beyoncé Experience was the third concert tour by Beyoncé. It was staged in support of her second studio album, B'Day (2006). The Beyoncé Experience consisted of 96 shows in 2007 over five legs, with concerts in Asia, Australia, North America, Europe and Africa. Fan-club tickets and VIP packages were on sale in early April and tickets sold officially on April 20, 2007. The tour began that month and finished that November. Knowles collaborated with America's Second Harvest on a campaign for people who fought with famine, holding pre-concert food drives at every stop during the tour asking from fans to bring food.
Rehearsals for the tour began in March 2007 and the performances featured music performed by an all-female band called Suga Mama chosen by Beyoncé Knowles and her father Mathew Knowles during auditions held before the release of B'Day. The set list of the concerts included songs from B'Day, Dangerously In Love, ten shortened versions of Destiny's Child's songs as well as "Listen", originally recorded by Knowles for the soundtrack of Dreamgirls (2006). Ten instrumentalists, three harmony vocalists and ten dancers backed Knowles onstage which also had disco balls hanging from the ceilings and color-changing stairs. For the wardrobe of the tour, Knowles collaborated with several designers; it consisted of silvery and sparkly dresses which received praise from critics.
The tour received positive reviews from music critics who praised Knowles' vocal abilities, dancing, choreography and energy on stage during the shows performed simultaneously. The performances of the slow-tempo songs and Destiny's Child's material during the concerts were highlighted by critics. The performance at the Staples Center in Los Angeles was recorded on September 2, 2007 and was released on November 16, 2007 as a live DVD titled The Beyoncé Experience Live.
Background[]
Prior to the commencement of The Beyoncé Experience in support of her second solo studio album B'Day (2006), Beyoncé performed at the 2007 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo with a guest feature from Slim Thug, who features on "Check On It"; she coined the show a "sneak preview" of The Beyoncé Experience. Fan-club tickets and VIP packages for the tour were made available for pre-order in early April on the website WeLoveBeyonce.com and the tickets officially went on sale on April 20, 2007. The tour kicked off on April 10 at the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan, with the first leg ending in Nagoya. The second leg started in Sydney, Australia and finished in the same city. Knowles continued with the third leg in Europe, beginning in Frankfurt, Germany, going through countries such as Spain, Sweden and Portugal, ending the leg with two dates at The Point in Dublin. The US leg of the tour began on July 6 at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, as part of the 2007 New Orleans Essence Music Festival, where Knowles headlined. The leg also stopped in Monterrey City, Mexico and finished in Winnipeg, Canada. She then embarked on a final leg of the tour in East Asia/Korea with the final concert taking place at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas on December 31, 2007. The Beyoncé Experience eventually visited ninety seven venues in total.
Knowles teamed with America's Second Harvest and Pastor Rudy Rasmus of St. John United Methodist Church for a pre-concert food donation drive which was part of The Beyoncé Experience at every stop. Food was collected for people who fought with famine. Knowles' organization The Survivor Foundation was also involved in the campaign. The first 1,000 fans who would drop off a minimum of three non-perishable food items would receive an autographed photo of Knowles and a raffle ticket for a chance to have an upgraded seat. For the food drive in Ethiopia, India and Turkey, Houston Chronicle collaborated with Knowles, creating a Virtual Aid Drive and asking people to send money to them. The funds were donated to the Global FoodBanking Network.
Development[]
Early before the release of B'Day in 2006, Knowles held a nationwide audition for female musicians which ended in Sony Music Studios where she and her father and collaborator Mathew Knowles were among the judges. The auditions searched for keyboard players, bassists, guitarists, horn players, percussionists and drummers with stops in New Jersey, Atlanta, Burbank, Chicago and Houston. The musicians were asked to re-create the performance of "Work It Out" from the live album Live at Wembley (2004) and be able to perform at least a one-minute solo. Knowles stated that her goal was to get together a group of "fierce, talented, hungry, beautiful" women and form an all-female band. Speaking about her tour and the decision to form a band, Knowles said, "I'm all about female empowerment. I'm all about pushing the envelope. I know it's my responsibility to do something different. I said, 'I want a band, I want something different.'" She further described the process of choosing the contestants during an interview, saying: "I had worldwide auditions; people flew in from Atlanta, Houston, Israel, all over the world. It was extremely difficult [choosing the winners]. [There are] so many talented women. I wanted only a nine-piece band, but the girls were so amazing, I couldn't decide. I think I'm going to wind up having 12 people so I have two [people playing] certain instruments, because [some of the contenders] were just brilliant. It's a thing called star quality, it's a thing you can't put your finger on, can't describe. When they were playing, I said, 'I want to see y'all battle.' I brought in two of every instrument and that's how I chose. You see the one that really wants it. It was so entertaining, the energy, seeing the girls battle ... God, it was the best. It was magical." Between segments of the show, Suga Mama performed periodic instrumental interludes, with every member giving a solo so Knowles could change her costumes seven times. Describing them as "fantastic", Eamon Sweeney of the Irish Independent noted that "the interval music works perfectly... but two excruciating drum solos are absolutely unnecessary".
Rehearsals for the tour began in March 2007. The set list of the shows included songs from the standard and deluxe edition of B'Day as well as songs from Dangerously In Love (2003). Ten shortened versions of Destiny's Child's songs were performed, as well as "Listen", a track performed by Knowles on the soundtrack of the 2006 musical drama film Dreamgirls, in which Knowles had starred. Twenty three people were present on stage with Knowles: ten instrumentalists, three harmony vocalists and ten dancers, from which only four were male. Anthony Venutolo from The Star-Ledger noted that the inclusion of female persons on stage was "a simple, effective way" to underscore the theme of female empowerment showcased during the concerts. Both Venutolo and Jon Pareles of The New York Times agreed that the shows used men only as dancers for the female audience. The conception and staging for the concert was done by Knowles, Kim Burse and Frank Gatson Jr. Gatson, Jonte Moaning, Ramone, Anthony Burrell and Danielle Polanco choreographed the dance routines. The tour was managed by Alan Floyd and its sponsors were Samsung and L'Oréal Paris. 75 stage and crew members and 60 tons of stage equipment, most of which was lighting, were present for the tour. 38 Sennheiser wireless channels were used for the shows and in a different frequency range, 38 backup wireless channels. The engineering team comprised James Berry who handled monitors for the band, Ramón Morales for Knowles, and Horace Ward at front of house. Sixteen of the wireless channels were devoted to personal monitor systems: 11 in stereo and five in mono. Knowles and the rest of the band members had a Sennheiser EK 300 IEM G2 monitoring receiver. Eleven of the channels provided wireless instrument support for guitar, bass and horns, using Sennheiser SK 500 G2 bodypack transmitters. The remaining channels covered Knowles' vocal microphone and those of her backup singers and guest vocalists. Sennheiser EM 3032-U and EM 550 G2 true-diversity receivers with Sennheiser A 5000-CP antennas and AC 3000 combiners rounded out the system. Knowles sang through a nickel Sennheiser SKM 5200 transmitter outfitted with a Neumann KK 105-S capsule. Ward commented that The KK 105-S was an "absolutely stunning microphone... [it] is beautifully smooth and captures every nuance of a talented vocalist's performance". He specified Sennheiser SKM 935 G2 microphones for the backup and guest vocalists because they sounded "excellent even under less-than-ideal conditions".
Commercial performance[]
As reported by a writer of Jet in September 2007, the tour had been selling out in every city it appeared at. In October 2009, when Knowles was chosen for the Woman of the Year Award presented by Billboard magazine, the gross from her tours was revealed. Between April 21 and September 8, 2007 it was reported to the magazine that The Beyoncé Experience grossed $24.9 million and 272,521 fans attended the twenty nine shows which were submitted to the boxscore at that time. The highest-grossing concert of the tour was at the Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York with $2,744,345. The concert that garnered the most number of attendees was at Fort Bonifacio in Taguig, Philippines on November 7, 2007 with total of 70,000 people in attendance.
Incidents and cancelled shows[]
On July 8, 2007, during the concert in St. Louis, two people in the crowd who attended the show suffered burns after pyrotechnics meant for the stage tumbled into the audience; Knowles visited them in the hospital after the show. During the performance of "Ring the Alarm" at the Orlando, Florida show on July 24, Knowles fell down a flight of stairs. Her heel got caught in the bottom on her long coat and she tripped down; she quickly picked herself up and carried on with the show. After the incident Knowles jokingly asked the audience, not to post the footage on YouTube although she knew they would; several clips were posted on the video-sharing website and went viral. On July 26 YouTube removed many of the clips as they were infringing copyright terms. After an initial removal spree, clips of the incident reappeared on YouTube, and were uploaded to other content-sharing websites such as Dailymotion and eBaum's World. A spokesperson for the singer said she was not injured during the fall, which she described as a "mere spot on an otherwise sensational, flawless show" adding, "Miss Knowles picked herself right up, without missing a beat, showing to all that she is the best." When asked about the fall on CNN, Knowles said that she hit her head and chin and was bruised up. She further noted that she immediately started thinking to get up and continue performing the show harder as an athlete due to the adrenaline she had: "Whenever I do something like that I always perform really, really hard cause it makes me little mad at myself so I just go crazy. So they got a really good show in the end." During her performance in Toronto on August 25, while performing "Déjà Vu", Knowles had a wardrobe malfunction as her dress flew over her head and was speculated to reveal her breast. However, a spokesperson for the singer revealed that the speculations weren't true, "She's wearing a flesh-tone bra! Do you really think Beyoncé would go onstage like that?". The video which was uploaded to YouTube went viral. Powers of Los Angeles Times discussed about the incidents, saying: "As a pop queen, Beyoncé is almost too perfect. A tumble down the stairs onstage in Orlando and a subsequent 'wardrobe malfunction' in Toronto garnered far more attention than was warranted partly because these mistakes contradicted her fiercely athletic style."
Knowles intended to take The Beyoncé Experience to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on November 1, 2007, however the show was cancelled "due to a scheduling conflict" and relocated at Jakarta, Indonesia. It was speculated by several publications that Knowles shifted the show because of Malaysia's strict rules surrounding the clothing that female performers wear. The government demanded for female performers to cover up from the top of their chests to their knees, including their shoulders. Several publications reported that the news followed an uptick in protests by several conservative groups, including the nearly 10,000-strong National Union of Malaysian Muslim Students, urging the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage to stop the concert from taking place. The statement addressed by Knowles' management team stated that the show was cancelled "with regret". The show on October 24 in Istanbul, Turkey was cancelled by the organizer, the sports club Fenerbahçe, due to attacks of Kurdistan Workers' Party in Hakkâri on September 21, 2007.