Points of Interest

I’ve just seen Lyambiko at Tollhaus. The current band consists of a classical jazz trio (Marque Lowenthal on piano, Robin Draganic on bass and Heinrich Köbberling on drums) plus Lyambiko as singer.

Photo: Alexander Kowalski, CC-by-SA

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Bernie Worell (keys), Blackbyrd McKnight (guit), TM Stevens (bass) & Cindy Blackman (drums) gave a concert at the Tollhaus. While most of the visitors obviously enjoyed the music, I was just bored. I visit concerts to listen to each individual musician, what he is doing, how he is doing it and what sounds he uses. I also like to hear well done arrangements.

Today, however, this was impossible. It was just noise. The only two instruments that always have been present were the distorted guitar and the snare drum. It was impossible to determine what the bass played, and the keyboards have just been masked completely.

Of course it was my fault to attend spontaneously. I should have read more about SociaLibrium beforehand. I learned my lesson :) .

Jazz X Change, featuring Werner Seifert, gave a concert at the Tollhaus. It was dedicated to Joe Zawinul who died last summer.
Edo Zanki who was planned to appear as a special guest (and whom I wanted to hear) unfortunately did not attend. So there have been 6 musicians, including Stephen Housden (guitar), Werner Seifert (Hammond organ, electric piano) and Thomas Siffling (trumpet).

They mainly played stuff from the earlier years of Joe’s carreer, so »Mercy, mercy, mercy« was not missed. Again I enjoyed the sound of a real Hammond. For my taste, though, I missed Joe’s later stuff, including his weird synth sounds :) .

And yes, of course here it is:

I could not resist to attend a concert of Electric Outlet again. I’ve seen them first at the annual Rock-Shop-Party. Today they played at the Universum Kinocenter in Landau. The sound in the cinema was excellent, due to the absorbing wall coverings and the ceiling being non-parallel to the floor.

Ralf Gustke, Frank Itt and Marcus Deml did a great job, while Marcus could not resist to provide the usual stagy show ;) . I even heard something like an 11/8 bar (5+6 beats). Tom Aeschbacher left the Access Virus at home this time. Instead, he treated two Yamaha synths and a digital Hammond organ. I’m really impressed by his playing. If I ran a band, this was the music I’d like to play.

So, thanks guys for a really nice evening. cu!

To torture you, here’s one of the famous badly lighted N810 photos ;-) :

Aly Keïta (“Ich bin ein Berliner”) gave a concert at the Tollhaus in Karlsruhe. He played his (DIY) Balafon and was accompanied by a great band. Frankly, I was quite impressed, the more that the tickets just were about 5 euro. But the concert turned out to be excellent. I also thought the Balaphon would be boring if played over three hours. It wasn’t. Aly really is a master of his instrument. The playing varied, and I really enjoyed the vitality in his playing. Additionally, Tollhaus was crowded much more than I expected.

Aly’s band consisted of some further excellent musicians. According to the Tollhaus web presence those are:

• Manou Gallo
• Pierre Vaiana
• Boris Tschango
• Dobet Gnahoré

At the end of the show, Aly brought some further brass musicians to the stage. We wondered why those have been hidden backstage before :) .

All in all, it has been a great concert and we have been more than impressed. Allthough it was not jazzy enough for my taste :) . Unfortunately, I left my Canon Powershot A650 at home and thus needed to take the pictures with the Nokia N810 instead. Judge for yourself:

Recently (2008-07-19), I’ve been at a concert of the reunion tour of Return to Forever. It was a great concert and I enjoyed each second individually. Right now I’m listening to an audio CD called “Electric Chick” (which has nothing to do with "fried chicken", I hope ;-). (more…)