26th June 2007

The sun was shining and the sky was blue as Hubert von Goisern and his band ran through a soundcheck for their kick-off concert on Friday, 22nd June. The Linz Europe Tour stage ship was docked near the Ö1 stage at the Donauinselfest and ducks swam about happily on the river below as the musicians performed their last checks. Unfortunately the blue skies did not remain and later in the day a sudden storm and torrential rain damaged the stage. Musicians and stage crew were drenched as they worked to rescue their instruments and equipment from the rain. The concert was postponed until Sunday, 24th June. On that evening the start of the Linz Europe Tour 2007 - 2009 drew an enormous crowd as Hubert von Goisern and his band played with guest musicians the Hohtraxlecker Sprungschanznmusi and Willi Resetarits.

Photos © Sarah Marchant | Click to enlarge

Der Standard 22nd June 2007

A ship is coming: Hubert von Goisern starts the Linz 09 tour

Wallsee - "David, please don't fall in." The warning call from Hubert von Goisern reaches keyboarder David Lackner just at the moment when he can only stop himself falling on the slippery jetty with a circus-standard balancing act. A ship has its pitfalls, the river is rough, especially for musical land rats.

Nonetheless, it was "cast away" for Hubert von Goisern and his band and ship crew on Wednesday evening in Wallsee, Lower Austria. Promptly at 19.30 hrs the world musician from the Salzkammergut started off on his musical journey on the Danube between Bavaria and the Black Sea as ambassador for Linz 09. In the first stage the exceptional musician plans to give 22 concerts with more than a hundred artists across Europe.

"Together we will make waves and make the Danube and her banks sound," Goisern is convinced. "The idea of the European tour was born on the Danube while fishing with Franz," the musician remembered. Aside from his hobby, fishing Franz is the head of the family firm Brandner Shipping. The long-established company set afloat the boat for the advance project for Linz 09.

Between engineering ...

The 700 horsepower heart of the convoy is the MS Wallsee. Harnessed to the tugboat is a barge which has been converted to a high-tech stage and the barracks ship for the 25 members of crew.

"The convoy is like a living entity. Fascinating, but dangerous too," Hubert von Goisern justifies the dragon on the flag. There is "a great heap of engineering" on the ship and you can "really hurt yourself if you get something wrong". With this the necessary caution is aroused for those wishing to look around, but Mr von Goisern adds: "Mind your head, mind your step - I get a bad feeling when outside people come onto the boat." But one is far from meagre ship's life on board the culture cutter. "Today there was Asian chicken with vegetables and basmati rice and cheese noodles as an alternative" - ship's chef Holger Alt does things in style. Past the fragrant rosemary bush and an open air bathtub to the village square. There is a green grass carpet and a large table and nice leather sofas invite you to stay with the view of the Danube.

... and fishing meditation

"This is where communal life takes place aside from the tour," explains tour manager Jonas Steckel. But a fight in the camp is not something to worry about. "Meditative fishing in the Danube delta relaxes you," smiles Steckel.

Free concerts along the Danube, including in Austria - the start is the Viennese Donauinselfest on Friday -, Germany, Hungary, Croatia and the Ukraine are on singing captain Hubert von Goisern's tourplan. "The project is a test of self-confidence and faith." The man of the mountains is part of the waves.

Text: Markus Rohrhofer | Photos: Alfred Habitzl

21st June 2007

After months of preparations the moment finally came on 20th June. The giant convoy for the Hubert von Goisern Linz Europe Tour 2007 - 2009 lifted its anchors in the in the evening and started its journey from Wallsee through the countries along the Danube. Concerts with around one hundred artists are planned at about 50 stops through Europe and down to the Black Sea. "This convoy is like a huge living entity, lively meetings from different countries will be taking place here over the next ten weeks," said Hubert von Goisern shortly before embarking on the adventurous journey along the Danube. During the tour the convoy will be "home" for musicians from different countries, technicians and the ship's crew.

Planet Linz

Salzburger Nachrichten 16th June 2007

In a few days it will be "cast off"! Hubert von Goisern took the time for an in-depth interview before his most ambitious project, the Linz Danube Tour.

There is a light breeze in the garden, as on board when calm prevails and only the speed of travel moves the air a little. On the wall at the entrance to his studio 54 year old Hubert von Goisern has hung a map. On it are the Balkans and the neighbouring countries. That is where he will be going from Thursday next week. The kick-off is a show at the Donauinselfest in Vienna. With a quick excursion up to Regensburg, the first leg of his Linz Danube tour will lead him for two and a half months along the south east part of the 2845 kilometre long river.

On the shelves under the steps to the studio are piles of press information and the CD of the artists with whom the Goiserer will be playing on this tour. The thrill of anticipation creeps in when he speaks about these artists. The respect "particularly for what can happen on such a tour" is also climbing - but: "there has to be a degree of uncertainty, otherwise it would be nothing," says the Goiserer.

The concert barge

Why are you setting off on this journey?

When like now I hear the lawnmower at my neighbour's I get the feeling that I'm leaving to find peace and concentration. But all kidding aside: I wanted to go on tour again. But I didn't want any repetition - and even a programme of new content would have been a repeat. It would have been the same halls and towns. And you best  learn about other regions, other attitudes towards life, when you go there and do something with people.

The first leg of your three year tour goes through eastern Europe, through countries that have just joined the EU, that in some cases are only recently independent states, or are licking the wounds of recent wars. What sort of political dimension does this tour have for you?

I am a convinced border eliminator. On the other hand the European Union is in the areas where we're not moving "brilliantly". With the accession to the EU of Romania and Bulgaria really massive boundaries have come up between what were once very closely connected regions. Where the EU border separates Romania from Moldova for example. There the Danube as a border river forms a boundary as big as in the time of the Soviet Union. On one side people today can now get on better with Salzburg or Vienna than with the neighbouring village on the other side of the river, with which they have a relationship going back centuries. It's super for those who can afford it. But for those who can't, the EU shows its elitist side.

On your journey you will mostly be where the borders run: on the Danube. The river is a source of life and of danger, a boundary and a uniting element.

Oh yes. This journey is the most complex thing I have done - and not just in terms of organisation and technically. In just three months it goes through ten countries and we will be meeting seven languages. Then every few days a new life groove and a new musical language will come on board with the local artists.

"Such an exchange requires enormous strength." That sounds tough.

Yeah. On the other hand, it's only about two dozen concerts. Otherwise we would be playing up to 100 concerts a year. But the project needs the longest breath nonetheless, not just because I have been working on it for the past year and a half. The exchange, the getting to know one another, the music playing, the checking out and also the being checked out - requires enormous strength.

So, to ask again: you had great success in the past and so don't have to prove that you are a world citizen and an attentive traveller. So why do this to yourself if you know it's going to to be tough?

I have a bit of a queasy feeling. But it's a bit like it is with mountains. You look at a mountain for a long time from down below and at some point you pluck up your courage and go up, even though you know that it will be strenuous. But what wins is hope for an unbelievable view, for the conquest. And I do all my things because I am a searcher. And with that I'm not just looking for the prettiest walk around a lake. Apart from that, this tour is by far and away the most exciting thing I have done. I'm hoping that the water has the calming effect that I have always experienced when travelling on a boat. A great peace comes over me, there's barely any hecticness. Lots of things just happen by themselves. Water, I never feel stress there. But I do have fears that the memory cells in my heart and mind will become so full this time that there will simply be no room for anything else.

What will happen then?

Well, playing together, that always works out, but there has to be more on this journey than just playing a few concerts together.

How should "more" be defined?

I hope that the journey will be the starting point of a long process. It would probably be too audacious to expect that something huge comes from the ship. If it - quote - goes differently, then all those taking part will feel the enthusiasm. We'll meet again and hopefully produce something together. That's then work for the next three, four years.

You're presenting a "best of" programme on the tour with a new band. Why are there no new songs?

I did want to do something new. But producing while organising - that simply didn't come off. The programme suits the eastern part of the tour well. But there should be something new for next year in the west, when we're going through a lot of familiar land. We'll be well attuned as a band too. We also have time on board when it will be just us - and the new band are loud, cool music people. I assume from that that we will come back with something from which a completely new programme can develop.

Text: Bernhard Flieher | Photo: Esher
© SN

OÖN 14th June 2007

On 20th June MS Wallsee casts off with a floating stage. Hubert von Goisern is setting off on the Linz Europe Tour, a project for the Capital of Culture 09. The boat from Brandner Shipping will be docking for 21 concerts on the east tour between Regensburg and the Danube delta. In 2008 the tour goes to Rotterdam. An OÖN interview with Hubert von Goisern and Captain Franz Brandner.

What bring a man of the water together with a man of the mountains?

Hubert von Goisern: The Linzer Klangwolke. There was once talk of me doing it and so I should have a look at it myself. I got a VIP place on the "Josef". We met there and I was allowed to take the helm one time. But perhaps you're not allowed to say that out loud.

Brandner: You can do that in the presence of the captain. I stood next to him and he steered like an A grade student and didn't take any of the pillars off the Nibelungen bridge.

Do you have boat experience?

Hubert von Goisern: I'm a canoeist, I learned to row on a barge, like a gondolier.

How do you get on with Hubert's music?

Brandner: He had his accordion with him one time, fishing underneath the Strudengau, where I have 9 kilometres of fishing rights on the Danube, and in Wallsee in an oxbow lake. He caught a pike ...

Hubert von Goisern: ... it was 70 centimetres long.

Brandner: ... and he played too.

Hubert von Goisern: But that was the one time that we didn't catch anything, on the bank holiday. In order to bring forth a bit of fishing fortune we sang the national anthem.

Brandner: ... but that didn't help either.

Hubert von Goisern: And you told me about the first time you went down the Danube with your father.

Brandner: That was 1938, down to Budapest with the raft. I was six years old. We didn't do much until '45, my father was serving and after the war we began again, my two brothers and I with our father. Back then there were no power stations except above Passau. Only the Russians were going with their gunships, 13 of them, each with 9000 horsepower. They were stationed below the Enns estuary, in Au on the Danube. When they came along they made waves as high as houses. If we had had no oxbow there, it would have been over.

How did the project come about?

Hubert von Goisern: Franz's stories about the journeys to the Black Sea and this desire for adventure came together with an idea I'd had ten years ago in Africa: to organise a festival with local bands with a ship on the Tanganyika Lake. Why not transplant this idea to the Danube?

Brandner: You wanted to sail with the "Negrelli", but that went wrong.

Hubert von Goisern: We wanted to adapt this ship, that belongs to "Via Donau" and the Austrian state, for the project. That was a tug of war with the authorities like no other, nobody understood. They gave us the runaround for six months, until we gave up. But I'm so happy about the way things are now, that now I say to myself, who knows what that was good for?

How do you feel about the approaching start, what are the expectations?

Hubert von Goisern: I am anticipating being able to dock everywhere, wherever we want, that the river rights and official saga have been sorted. It'll probably need a bit of residual anarchy to enact all the plans. For example the mayor if Ismajil had all my lyrics translated to make sure that there's nothing revolutionary in them. And then I am hoping for a good moderate water level, not too high, not too low. We are playing on the ship on a stage with optimum sound and light engineering and we don't have to rig and derig every day like usual. We have a floating stage, so we can produce night and day, even when we are travelling.

What will come from it?

Hubert von Goisern: A DVD, so that everybody can see what happens when musicians meet. We have a film team with us who will be documenting everything. That will also be on the television as the ORF are making five 30-45 minute programmes about both journeys.

What do you tell someone who asks what good your project is in cooperation with the Capital of Culture?

Hubert von Goisern: The operators, particularly manager Martin Heller, know very well that being Capital of Culture is not a case of setting off as many fireworks in a year as is possible, that will then blow over. The idea of travelling the two European rivers, the Danube and the Rhine-Main, before it begins and promoting the hub of Linz makes sense. I promote my concerts beforehand too.

You're playing free of charge in the east?

Hubert von Goisern: I don't want anyone to stay away because they can't afford it.

Who is bearing the cost?

Hubert von Goisern: A third comes from Linz09, in which federal government, city and country are represented, a third from Red Bull and a third from me and my management.

What is important to you in this: an artistic, humanistic or political aspect?

Hubert von Goisern: It does have a political aspect, because apart from Serbia, Croatia, the Ukraine and Moldova, all the countries we are travelling through are part of the European Union – but there isn't really a feeling for each other yet, particularly towards the east. I include myself in this and I want to correct this, in that I'm going down there and meeting people. We always get in the news, "oh, now they're coming from the Balkans, from the east and we don't want them." And when I was in Bulgaria and Romania last year, I noticed that they are all afraid of the EU. That's interesting: here we're afraid of those down there and down there they're afraid of us up here. I think we all belong together and I don't like these border controls, I prefer a free passage of people and goods. If transport were no longer supported and agrarian exports were no longer subsidised, an equilibrium would be established.

When you bring musicians from the southeast to the Linz Fest, people are delighted. If the musicians were to ask for work here, they would probably "sod off!".

Hubert von Goisern: Is that the case? I don't know. If someone offers their talents and there is no use for them, you can say so nicely.

And if it's different?

Hubert von Goisern: You must accept it. But you can make a personal contribution to improving it.

Mr Brander, will you be captain?

Brandner: I have said that I will sail, but at the moment, I don't know whether I will manage it because of my health. But I will certainly be along for some of it.

Hubert von Goisern: He is the best.

Ö1 15th June 2007

On Friday 22nd June the musician Hubert von Goisern will be starting his tour with a concert on a ship at the Donauinselfest in Vienna. On this tour he will cover a total of 12,000 river kilometres in two years.

On the first leg, the tour goes down the Danube and next year it will lead to the north, through the Rhine-Main canal to Rotterdam. The Linz Europe Tour 2007-2009 then comes to an end in Linz, when the Upper Austrian city will be the European Capital of Culture. The project was presented on Friday.

Willi Resetarits, Hubert von Goisern and Martin Heller Photo: © ORF

Audio: "Ö1 Kulturjournal" report

Audio: HvG at the press conference in Vienna

Wiener Zeitung 15th June 2007

Hubert von Goisern sets off to Europe on 20th June

Vienna. (ju) Linz's time as Capital of Culture officially begins on 1st January 2009. However, a forerunner starts as soon as 20th June 2007. A gigantic forerunner to be precise. Next Wednesday Hubert von Goisern begins his Linz Europa Tour. For three years the Danube will be his home. In the first year he will be travelling by ship to 20 harbours. He will be covering 12,000 kilometres. And will be playing music and giving concerts with local musicians.

Start at the Danube Island

The first concert takes place on 22nd June at the Donauinselfest - here von Goisern's first partner will be Willi Resetarits. From here the tour will go with three ships to Regensburg and Passau and then in the direction of Croatia, Romania, the Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia. The first leg of the three year tour comes to an end on 1st September in Linz again. In 2008 they go north through the Rhine-Main Canal to Basel and Rotterdam.

In recent months Hubert von Goisern travelled the eastern countries, dealing with officials and artists. And he told at a press conference in Vienna of the many bureaucratic hurdles that he and his team have faced. Although many barriers have fallen, many people also have "a barrier in their mind". The project and the musical collaborations should "give others the courage to approach each other and listen to one another." He is looking forward to "entering the blank spots on the map".

Four million project

Goisern is taking on a part of risk of the tour himself. The first two years of the project are costing 4 million Euros. A third of this will be carried by the Capital of Culture Linz, a third by Dietrich Mateschitz, that is, Red Bull, and a third by the artist himself. This should be made back by the concerts. Only in the eastern countries, Vienna and Linz will there be no admission charges.

Ö1 will be accompanying the project: with concert broadcasts and "supporting journalistic work", says Ö1 Head of Programming Alfred Treiber. The concerts will also be documented by local broadcasters as part of a cooperation. Culture Minister Claudia Schmied, who has taken on patronage of the project, said: "Music knows no bounds and rivers know no bounds either."

APA 15th June 2007

"Linz Europe Tour 2007-09": Public broadcasters to record and broadcast around 20 concerts

The radio broadcaster Ö1 is promoting cooperations with public broadcasters in the eastern European countries. In cooperation with the EBU - European Broadcasting Union - a media platform will be installed. The first multi-national project coincides with a large-scale project from the Capital of Culture Linz 2009: Hubert von Goisern's Linz Europe Tour 2007 - 2009, which will take the musician by ship from Linz to Romania, will be documented and broadcast by local stations.

Despite the democratisation of the eastern European media in the sense of a critical openness after the change in 1989, Ö1 Head of Programming Alfred Treiber sees the need to highlight and strengthen the "significance of public broadcasters for cultural identity". Goisern's project, playing music together with artists from 14 countries in the summer, is a good occasion for this: "an important part of the media realisation of the Linz Europe Tour will be concert broadcasts on radio as well as supporting journalistic work," said the director at the panel discussion, which was led by Willi Resetarits. On the Ö1 website will be further and deeper "intellectual material", in order to "offer collective brain food". The concerts will be broadcast not just in the tour countries, but will also be accessible to interested parties in the EBU portal.

Hubert von Goisern will be docking in 20 harbours. After the kick-off concert on 22nd June at the Donauinselfest, where Resetarits will also be on the stage, the tour will go with three ships to Regensburg and Passau and then in the direction of Croatia, Romania, the Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia. The first leg of the three year tour comes to an end on 1st September in Linz again. On board is a sound system for crowds of up to 5000 and a complex hydraulic stage, enabling the optimum view for the audience on the river bank. 12,000 kilometres will be covered on the tour.

Stuttgarter Zeitung 12th June 2007

At the end of June the singer-songwriter Hubert von Goisern begins a Danube tour through the countries of Eastern Europe

If there had been peace on the banks of the Congo, then none of this would have happened. Not here, not in Europe. But in this world thoughts travel quickly from there to here: a few years ago Hubert von Goisern discovered a potential paradise in Africa and imagined how it would be to travel the Congo, giving concerts from a ship. But it soon became clear that it could be a long time before peace came to the Congo. But the Danube is a river that unites too. And to make sure people listen to him on the river, the musician recently climbed aboard an aeroplane.

Globalisation manifests itself in the mahogany panelling and leather upholstery of the DC-6B, which leaves Salzburg at 7am and flies over the mountains in the direction of Kiev. Yugoslavia's head of state Marshall Tito bought the luxury aircraft at the end of the fifties, in the mid-seventies he then sold it to the Zambian president, Kenneth Kaunda. The aeroplane sat around at Lusaka airport until an Austrian, who has an energy drink made to a Thai recipe to thank for his riches, acquired it a few years ago and had it restored. And now Dietrich Mateschitz has put the most beautiful aeroplane of his fleet at the musician's disposal for a week, the musician whose name and hat-wearing, unshaven likeness temporarily adorn the fuselage of the DC-6.

Hubert von Goisern looks exactly like this in the morning at company hangar 7 at Salzburger Flughafen, except that instead of a floppy hat he's wearing a leather cap that he will lose three and a half hours later when landing in Kiev, find again and then never take off again. Hubert von Goisern, who played music with Africans in Africa, who once collected Tibetan sounds and who most recently rediscovered the folk songs of the Salzkammergut, his homeland and put them back on the scene in fantastic fashion, has his own concept of globalisation. A river unites, he says. Countries, people and enemies too.

That is why from 22nd June he is sailing from Vienna down the Danube to the Black Sea on his Linz Europe Tour. He will be sleeping alongside his band on the barracks ship, he will sing his songs from the concert ship and play his accordion in Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and the Ukraine. The whole summer long. Sometimes he will be going against the current and right at the start he will play in Melk in Lower Austria, Regensburg and Passau. At the beginning of August Hubert von Goisern will be playing in Romania where the Danube flows into the sea. After that he will come back upstream to a concert in Budapest, in order to sail east again from there in the direction of Serbia. He will meet local artists everywhere, whom he will invited to play with him.

In order that enough people are standing on the banks of the Danube later, Hubert von Goisern is flying to the capitals of his tour countries in advance. In the VIP area at Kiev airport passport control is sluggish, but it's all relative. On his research trip recently, the musician says, he waited for two hours at the Bulgarian-Romanian border, because the customs officer did not believe that his car really belonged to him. When he was finally allowed to cross the border, the singer said thank you. The official replied: "No, not thank you - give me something that reminds me I was good to you." Hubert von Goisern gave him a CD.

In the conference room at Kiev airport Hubert von Goisern shows the Ukrainian journalists a film that shows him with a lot of Danube water - and a lot of goodwill. He will be appearing in the Ukraine in Ismajil and Vylkovo at the end of July, with the Ukrainian band Haydamaky and Zdob Si Zdub from Moldova. "I don't need a partner who hides behind their traditions like a shield, but rather one who is fired up their traditions," says the Austrian. And that the European Union is worried about their neighbours in the east. Then he says: "I don't like borders, I don't like showing my passport and answering stupid questions." Martin Heller, manager of the Capital of Culture Linz 2009, adds: "Hubert is a kind of ambassador for the Capital of Culture Linz." Everything is translated from English into Ukrainian, not everything is understood.

Heller is putting a million of his 64 million Euro Capital of Culture budget into the world musician's European tour. In 2008 the tour leads up the Rhine to the North Sea and in 2009 it comes to an end with a festival in Linz lasting several days. This is why Heller has also flown to Kiev and from there to Belgrade, Sofia, Bucharest and Zagreb for a week. The sponsor is paying about twice as much as the Capital of Culture and also donates the drinks cans that are consumed in the conference room. The singer will put in about a million himself.

But first of all von Goisern invites the Ukrainian journalists on a roundtrip over Kiev in the DC-6. "It's amazing - your face emblazoned on an aeroplane," the manager of the Ukrainian band Haydamaky says to the Austrian on the tarmac, "I wish my face was on an aeroplane." Meanwhile the Ukrainian photographers photograph Olexander Yarmola, the Haydamaky singer in front of the aeroplane. Because nobody knows Hubert von Goisern here. The journalists who aren't bad are thrilled by the short flight however and applaud when the aeroplane lands.

Afterwards Hubert von Goisern analyses his Cyrillic name card that has him as Gubert. "That's politics," he says, "they've made it Russian." He would rather have seen Chubert, as he did recently in Bulgaria. Hubert von Goisern, whose last studio album was a few years ago now, has occupied himself with the material. He has been working on his ship tour for eighteen months, knows what he's talking about with locks and harbours and has persuaded his manager. Somebody brings in cheese rolls and chocolate and then there is the flight to Belgrade and in the back of the aeroplane is a sofa on which you can stretch out.

"I'm interested in projects that involve people who can't get along," says the singer from Bad Goisern, who is still called Hubert Achleitner at passport control in Eastern Europe. When fear of Islam was breaking in the west after the 11th September 2001, he invited the Egyptian singer Mohamed Mounir to join him on tour. Now he is betaking himself on the river than unites Serbs and Croats, Hungary and Romania. To the people who think that a concert tour on ship is something like crossing the Sahara on your hands he says: "It's absurd to think that you're deliberately looking for obstacles simply because you're using a natural waterway." In contrast to surfing the internet, letting oneself float down a waterway is something very natural.

He will be playing a greatest hits programme, for the first time in his career. He will write songs on the ship and in the studio on board he will see what is possible in the "acoustic biotope" of which he dreams. After the eastern European leg of the tour, he might record an album with musicians who know each other, also because they will have spent months sleeping in swaying two-man cabins.

Everybody has their own room in the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Belgrade during the promotional flight for the tour. The next day the press conference is at the airport in Belgrade, afterwards another roundtrip. But now it is night time, the singer has been on his feet for twenty hours and it's not long until the tour starts. "The panic comes in waves," says Hubert von Goisern, its last visit was a few weeks ago though. Now it is the joy of what will finally be starting that predominating. "What I can't imagine at all at the moment, is my life afterwards."

The tour begins on 22nd June in Vienna, on 29th June Hubert von Goisern docks with his ship in Regensburg, on the 30th June in Passau. Tickets for the concerts are available from www.sommerspiele-melk.at.

Michael Werner
© Stuttgarter Zeitung

ORF 27th - 29th May 2007

Watch the "Oberösterreich heute" report 27th May 2007	Watch the "Oberösterreich heute" report 28th May 2007
Audio: "Ö1 Kulturjournal" report 29th May 2007