- 14. Dez. 2019

Vienna (AT), Porgy & Bess - The Great European Song Book

A celebration of Schubert & Schumann & Brahms

As always when we play at Porgy & Bess, the wonderful Jazzclub in the heart of town, we tend to forget to take pictures. Luckily many friends of us send us a few, so there will be at least one or two to look at : ). We planned a celebration of our favourite romantic composers Schubert & Schumann & Brahms and chose seven songs of each album to play for that night – in total 21 songs out of three albums!!! I was very excited throughout the day and we didn‘t have a lot of time for our sound check, so it was a pretty tight schedule to get ready - thank you very much to Christoph Burgstaller, our long time sound companion (he recorded all our Song Books) for the wonderful sound that night!!! When we walked out on stage, we were welcomed by a sparkling full Porgy expecting to hear our favourite songs of our three albums and celebrating our musical journey with us. So many friends came out to support us from all over Europe: Zürich, Basel, Freiburg, Kiew, Wels : )! And to celebrate this music in new ways we invited many special guests to play with us and bring different colours to these exceptional songs. Amazing Sabine Hasicka, the dancing percussionist in tap shoes showed her colours in „Tell Me My Sweet Sheperdess“ and also in the „Post“, where I had the honour to dance along with her for 16 bars : ) oh yeah! Alois Eberl, wonderful trombone player shared his powerful ideas in major in „Im Dorfe“. Then there was our favourite whistle soloist Anna Bux who whistled her way into the audiences hearts in „Sleeping Beauty“! And of course Joris Roelofs on clarinets for the extraordinary lines he creates every single time within his soli. We opened the night with Schubert‘s „Gute Nacht“ and had a great time on stage. The inner circle from the very beginning : ) consisting of Hans Strasser, Ingrid Oberkanins and last but not least arranger & pianist mathias rüegg were tight and when they needed to be loose - I loved the ballads during our Schumann set, especially „First Green“. Thank you for bringing these songs to life in so many different colours – you are incredible! Somewhere halfway through our setlist mathias mentioned his poems about animals aka „Tiergedichte“ and in case he did, I prepared a couple of his poems to read out loud – he had no idea and I think was happily suprised and maybe a little shocked : )! But also inspired, because he created a page on his website dedicated to animal poems ; )! We enjoyed every song along the way and closed our night with a special surprise - we gave a sneak peak into the new programme, the next musical step: The Händel Song Book with Gregor Aufmesser on bass and Tobias Faulhammer on guitar (and Dominik Fuss on trumpet who couldn't be there but will be there on all other live Händel occasions : ) ). We played two songs of all that Händel for the very first time that night – one of them was the beautiful ballad Ombra Mai Fu from Xerxes! I can't believe that it was 2013 when we played our version of Schubert‘s songs for the very first time at Porgy & Bess and now though we still play some of the same songs so much has changed. I think that‘s the beauty of it - to share steps along the way of our journeys! We played our „Great European Song Book“ for a wonderful audience and there is really not much left that I can say but THANK YOU ALL for this marvelous night.