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LINZ EUROPE TOUR 2007-2009

LINZ EUROPE HARBOUR FESTIVAL: 3rd - 5th JULY 2009, Linz Harbour

HvG

HvG: I've always seen myself in the role of host with this project. A host who on these journeys was always ready for mischief, just like the artists who came onto the boat with us with wide open ears and senses. They all inspired us a great deal, because from the very first moment they revealed to us how big and unique what we were doing was. After a few weeks on the ship you forget what an incredibly wonderful and exceptional circumstance it is in which you are living. The guests refreshed this appreciation time and again. It took five minutes on the ship at most before everyone's eyes lit up.

Now these journeys are happening in a compressed form as a festival and once more we are entirely letting ourselves in for what the guests will bring with them. The festival only lasts three days, but with the "warm up" rehearsals, it's a week. That is how long the great musicians from the east and west will be congregated in Linz. There are very exotic components, explosive joy in playing, fantastic artists and performers. More than 100 people are coming together in the smallest place and an enormous firework of creativity is going to be ignited.

Friday, 3rd July 2009

  • Philipp Poisel & Band
    Germany

    Philipp PoiselHe is an unbelievably sensitive, quiet, but all the more intense singer-songwriter from Swabia. Wherever we played, of course we mainly had a Hubert von Goisern audience. Then they were presented with Philipp as opener and he caught everyone from the first songs, without needing to shout, without banging a drum for himself. Philipp is a massage for the soul.

  • Claudia Koreck & Band
    Germany

    Claudia KoreckI got to know her as a young singer-songwriter. She had just released her debut album. She comes from Bavaria and so it was self-evident that she would be on stage with us at one of the "Danube ship concerts" in the Bavarian region. Meanwhile she's released her second album and I'm looking forward to being on stage with her again. Because she's a young woman who lives in the here and now and writes songs that express what young people, who are growing up now, experience and feel. Even though I'm from another generation I find her songs really fascinating.

  • Karandila
    Bulgaria

    KarandilaA party. I'm really looking forward to seeing them again. They were on board with us the longest. They really became a part of our family. Since we spent a lot of time on the river with them and were able to rehearse a lot, we developed a lot of pieces together that we must now freshen up. They're the ones I'm looking forward to seeing the most.

  • Klaus Doldinger's Passport
    Germany

    Klaus Doldinger's PassportKlaus Doldinger is a very great role model of mine, a great icon, an unbelievable musician and composer who is up to every trick. He exudes an enormous calm and naturalness and then suddenly he lets loose with the wildest things. He has gathered really nice, talented musicians around him. Sincere champs on their instruments. He's still the same old guy musically speaking. That means: jazz rock, lots and lots of influences from the Orient, an exotic groove. He takes you on a journey from which you can't extract yourself.

Saturday, 4th July 2009

  • Loredana Groza
    Romania

    Loredana GrozaIn Romania people say: she is our Madonna. Whether you like Madonna or not, she's a woman who hasn't had such success for nothing, there's something about her. I've never met Madonna, but I don't think she could be as nice as Loredana. On stage Loredana is a real limelight hog, she comes to life on stage. I saw her at the Linz-Fest three years ago. You first have to manage to put yourself in front of a foreign audience and make yourself inescapable. I take my hat off to her for the way in which she did that.

  • Haydamaky
    Ukraine

    HaydamakyA band from the Ukraine, an unusual sound. They sound unique - I think so anyway. Haydamaky have some exceptional musicians among their number. The whole band, the whole music has a very foreign, exotic, a downright melancholic touch that gets under your skin. After I saw them live for the first time, it was clear to me: THEY are exactly what I want.

  • BAP
    Germany

    BAPBAP are like an American rock classic. Only the language and the stories that Wolfgang Niedecken tells aren't American, but rather "Kölsch". Even if you don't know a BAP number, you still immediately get the feeling that you can sing along. They can do that! There is a relationship. When I first started playing in Germany and the first reviews were published in the papers, everyone was struggling to find an example in order to explain to people what was going on. Again and again the name BAP came up. So I bought one of their CDs to find out with whom I was being compared - and I didn't understand a word. And I thought: Aha, that's what they mean.

  • Haindling
    Germany

    HaindlingHaindling needs as little description as Willi Resetarits. But what characterises Haindling is certainly this elephantine element. It applies to their Bavarian/African elephant grooves, as well as these very special brass sounds. You hear a bar of Haindling - and you know: Haindling. Hans-Jürgen Buchner doesn't even need to sing. He has simply developed his style over the years and decades and the success affirms what he does.

Sunday, 5th July 2009

  • Stelzhamma
    Austria

    StelzhammaUpper Austria, that's where we're at home. The poet Stelzhamer gave the great description of a village in the Innviertel. "A spire in front, a spire behind and in between clumsy people!" Only someone who lives there can say that. That's how I see Stelzhamma. It's music and a way of playing music that has something very regional about it. And it's funny that the bandleader of Stelzhamma is the bandleader of Russkaja too. I wanted them with us, because they wanted to be there!

  • Willi Resetarits & Stubnblues
    Austria

    Willi ResetaritsWhat can you say about Willi that nobody already knows? Nothing. We began the journey with Willi. He was on board in 2007 when we cast off. If he wasn't with us now I'd have the feeling that we'd lost him and I don't want to go into the last round with that feeling.

  • Zdob și Zdub
    Moldova

    Zdob și ZdubEthno punk. The guys have unbelievable energy. When they let rip it just takes your feet from under you. I feel a great affinity with them too. On the one hand they're good friends with tradition. And on the other there's also something riotous and unadjusted about them. They're a good example of the individualism and authenticity I wanted with all the guests.

  • Konstantin Wecker & Spring String Quartett
    Germany/Austria

    Konstantin WeckerWecker is a storyteller and a singing poet. You can see Wecker in Vienna at least once a year: but what happens when we play together and stand on stage together (and develop a programme, as will be the case here) then it's something quite different. Something really exceptional arises. The way Wecker sings and plays when he plays with us only happens when he plays with us.

LINZ EUROPE HARBOUR FESTIVAL: 3rd - 5th JULY 2009, Linz Harbour

"The Linz Europe Harbour Festival will be a unique festival of encounter, for both the audience and the musicians taking part. I know everyone who accompanied me on the Linz Europe Tour 2007 - 2009, but many of them have not yet had direct contact with one another. I hope that everyone will be happy with this programme and I'm really looking forward to the musical collaboration. I'll be on stage for three days, playing a different set each day. The guests influence what I play and through that synergies arise with all the bands that cannot yet be estimated."
Hubert von Goisern

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Linz Europe Harbour FestivalThe confines of a ship leave little room for self-will, but the scope available to Hubert von Goisern and his band during the two summers on the Linz Europe Tour was used fully. The amplifiers were turned outwards: always a good way to get foreign terrain vibrating. The work inside succeeded based on the same principles too. The energy came from the tightness of time and space and from the exchange with musicians, who came on board along the way. The interaction did justice not only to the Austrian's alpine inheritance and his love of the traditional sounds of foreign lands, but also to the way it was expressed in wild, hard rock vehemence.

In the summer of 2007 a very young band was let loose with the Goiserer on the stage of converted barge - first they travelled eastwards along the Danube, then in summer 2008 they travelled northwest, along such waterways as the Rhine Main Danube Canal - where David Lackner (keyboards), Maria Moling (percussion, vocals), Alex Pohn (drums), Helmut Schartlmüller (bass), Elisabeth Schuen (violin, vocals), Marlene Schuen (violin, vocals) and Severin Trogbacher (guitar), as well as Darinka Tsekova (gadulka) on request let rip with the various guests.

Zdob și Zdub from Moldova with their version of Hiatamadl, the Serbian alternative thinker Rambo Amadeus, or the "Romanian Madonna" Loredana Groza - to name but a few - brought Eastern Europe close enough to touch. The for many less mysterious west was represented by the brilliant ship's guests of 2008: BAP, Xavier Naidoo, Konstantin Wecker, Klaus Doldinger and Zap Mama were among those to undertake the adventure of performing on the ship.

The adventurous river journey of the Linz Europe Tour is now over, the concert barge has returned to its original purpose, carrying ballast along the river - but the energy and joy in both playing music and meeting other musicians and people is being carried on into 2009, the year in which Linz is the European Capital of Culture.

From 3rd to 5th July 2009 the finale of the Linz Europe Tour will be taking place with a festival, in which nearly all the protagonists of the past two eventful and richly musical years will join together on stage. Anyone who could not make it to a concert on the route to the Black Sea or Amsterdam now has the chance to see how these exciting musical encounters will be recalled, not on board this time, but still together with Hubert von Goisern on stage.

The three-day programme will be carried by Hubert von Goisern and his band, who after the end of the leisurely forward motion on the barge took on a terrific concert hall tour at a faster tempo. Hard rock booms. Pop bubbles. There's inner alpine yodelling. Luxuriance never becomes lost in the details.