Wien (AT), Chaya Fuera Yellow Lounge
The days before the concert I spent with reading the inspiring book by dancer and actress Louise Brooks entitled „Lulu in Berlin und Hollywood“. I was so fascinated by her words and perspectives that I had to start watching all her movies, first on my list was Pandora’s Box by the Austrian filmmaker G.W. Pabst. I still can’t believe she was 21 when she appeared in this movie. At first unappreciated but now one of the classics. Miss Brooks presence is stunning. I was so inspired by her uncompromising, unique appearance and her bobbed haircut, that I went to my hairdresser Nicole, showed her a picture of Louise Brooks and without any further discussions left the hairdresser’s with a blond helmet : ).
Next day I was on my way to our rehearsal before the gig. We had soundcheck and Fab had the fabulous idea to turn off all the monitoring on stage besides mine, which we did and enjoyed playing in that almost acoustic way very much.
At this point thanks to Martin Vetters, our sound engineer, who made everyone sound good that night at Chaya. After our soundcheck we were invited for dinner by (Laurel and) Hardo Gruber from Universal at the Gaumenspiel. He took especially good care of Alice Sara Ott, the amazing pianist who cut her pony before her performance with an unbelievable huge pair of scissors. It was the first time that the Yellow Lounge took place in Vienna hosted by charming Daniela Zimper. I was happy to be the opening act, so that I could listen (without being nervous) to the great performances by Japanese-German pianist Alice Sara Ott playing Mussorgsky’s "Bilder einer Ausstellung", Polish tenor Piotr Beczala singing Viennese Songs by Tauber and Phil.Blech playing a Best-of-Classical.
As we played a 30min version of the whole journey we decided to go for „You will not hear me leaving“, „The numbers and the dates“, „At others stare but not at me“, „I tripped on almost every stone“ and „Footprints can’t be seen“. We didn’t want to keep the following performances waiting – that is why we didn’t play an encore, it was an exception made for the artists playing that night. I always love to play encores and in St.Johann and Dornbirn you can have as many as you want,I promise : ), yours Lia!
P.S.: I am deeply impressed by Miss Ott – how one can have the nerve and endurance to survive as a classical trained pianist...it's hardcore!
