Celine Dion - Taking Chances World Tour @ Malaysia (Set 1)

I was fortunate enough to be at Celine Dion's only South East Asian gig of her Taking Chances World Tour, on Sunday 13th April 2008 :-)

It was an open air performance at the historic Stadium Merdeka, Kuala Lumpur, when the petite 40-year-old Celine Dion performed her 22 songs ... nearly non-stop! I was part of 10,000 fans who were at the Stadium singing along to her every song :-) With the tempo of her performance, and the excellent choreography, it would have been easy not to have realised there were 22 songs in all!

We got the to Stadium Merdeka at about 08:10pm, and was seriously worried that it would rain. The seats were awesome in that they were only 5 rows from the front, with various who's who of Malaysia sat around us, including various developer bosses, celebrities etc. Grrr... the show only kicked off at 08:50pm, but boy was it worth the rate!!

The concert kicked off with ... I Drove All Night. Powerful! This was first written for Roy Orbison (1987), and later covered by Cyndi Lauper (1989), and most recently Celine Dion (2003). This was quickly followed by Power of Love.



Celine Dion then moved into an apologetic statement ... This show was previous planned for 8th April, but due to falling ill in Australia, various postphonements along the legs of her world tour had to be made. “Thank you for being understanding and for giving me another chance to perform here tonight" and her comments about how difficult it must have been for the members of the audience to re-schedule, due to work and family commitments, drew a rowsing applause from the audience.

Various dignataries were present at this gig, notwithstanding the VVIPs sat around our area, but also ... Yang Di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin with Raja Permaisuri Agong Tuanku Nur Zahirah, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak and his wife Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his wife Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali.
Sat a few rows ahead of me? Singer Datuk Siti Nurhaliza and her husband Datuk Khalid Mohd Jiwa! Not far away ... Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir, son of Tun Dr M.


She then moved on to various other power ballads in her repertoire ...
Taking Chances , It's All Coming Back to Me Now , Because You Loved Me , and more ...



Celine singing I'm Your Angel (with Barnev Valsaint)


Wikipedia comments ...
Taking Chances Tour is the current concert tour by Canadian pop singer Céline Dion, in support of her latest English album Taking Chances, released in November 2007.
The year-long tour will visit 5 continents, 23 countries and 82 cities. Dion will perform 116 shows.
Record sellouts ... Céline Dion set a record in the history of Canadian concerts, when she sold out all her Montreal shows in only a few minutes. After further shows being added, bringing the total to 8, Montreal's audience became the largest on the tour with 160,000 spectators for a single city. At the end of this tour, Céline will have played the Bell Centre 28 times on tour since 1996. Other Canadian concerts were sold out immediately, prompting another date to be added in Edmonton, Vancouver and Winnipeg.
In the U.S., second dates were announced in New York City, Uniondale, Boston, and Newark.
In the U.K., tickets for Manchester and London were sold out in a few minutes. Two new dates were added on the same day. The 80,000 tickets in Dublin were sold out in 3 hours.
A second concert date was also announced for Sydney, Australia after tickets were selling fast in the country
Postponed concerts ... Céline Dion was forced to postpone all her concerts in Australia due to a throat infection. Her Australian publicists said "Ms Dion is being treated with antibiotics for a minor throat infection and irritated sinuses that she has been suffering from for a number of days since arriving in Australia,". Because of the itinerary changes, the concert scheduled for Malaysia was also changed. The concert in Beijing, China has been cancelled.
Céline celebrated her 40th birthday on March 30th in Sydney, Australia, a day before she resumed her postponed concerts from the week before.