Ava Max – Varsity Theater – Minneapolis MN – June 30th 2023

6/30/2023 Ava Max, Scarlet Opera & Band of Silver @ Varsity Theater

Review and photos by Todd Johnson

I really didn’t know anything about Ava Max until recently when tickets went on sale and a friend of mine really wanted to go. I purposely didn’t listen to her music beforehand, I wanted to hear it in person to find out what it was like. I heard that she had an amazing voice and I also heard that it was a surprisingly small venue to play for someone who has such a big voice. The show was an all ages show and it had a very wide variety of people there. Local celebrities such as a contestant from the show Big Brother were there. The Varsity is a very cool venue. It almost has a slight tropical theme to it. When Ava Max came on stage and started singing, it was very apparent that she had a very bombastic voice that was very powerful. She also had around 5 dancers with her as well that were awesome. However, after awhile I noticed there was a backing track that she sometimes seemed to ignore. I’m not sure if it was intentional or not, but the backing vocal would be playing in the background and then she would sometimes sing with it and sometimes she wouldn’t, but she didn’t try to hide it. Other than that, she puts on a great show. The dancers were on point and so was the music. The only thing I would suggest are maybe more costume changes (although the outfit she was wearing had a Harley Quinn vibe to it which was very cool.)

The opening bands were amazing as well. The first opening band, Band of Silver, was awesome and were very welcoming to their fans. They even had portable light with the so fans could get a better photo with the band. The lead singer was very down to earth and a sweetheart and her brother was a very good guitar player. The drummer was very solid and very cool. Hopefully Band of Silver will come back to the Twin Cities sometime soon on their own headlining tour.

The 2nd band, the Scarlet Opera, was an amazingly energetic band that got the crowd whipped up into a frenzy. The lead singer, Luka Bazulka, came out on stage in a outfit that looked like he was bullfighting. The 5 piece band were somewhat reminiscent of the band Queen and Luka was like Freddie Mercury.  The original name of the band was “Perta” but eventually they changed it to the Scarlet Opera.