S'NIX TOUR 2008-09
Hubert von Goisern: impressive show in Kassel
Kassel.
Had he been here before? Hubert von Goisern can't quite remember any
more. 2002 or thereabouts? But whatever, he remembers that the Stadthalle
in Kassel is now the fourth concert under a roof after two years of open
airs on a ship, 100 metres long, on the way from the Black Sea to the
North Sea. The Stadthalle isn't quite full, but the atmosphere is full
of expectation. Goisern fans perhaps aren't quite so numerous, but they're
extremely loyal.
And Hubert doesn't disappoint them for a second. The multi-instrumentalist begins with the accordion, changes to the trumpet, the three women come on stage, Hubert plays guitar, the audience in Kassel is already firmly under the spell of the music. Pure Goisern, but with bonds, at times with Richard Strauß, or Janis Joplin, or folk music.
And in between he gets political. With a view to the financial crisis he feels as though he's in a parallel world. But: "I'm as pleased as Punch that all this speculator craziness is now a real craziness. Afterwards: Mercedes Benz Janis would have loved it, the audience did.
Sometimes the music sounds like a Schuhplattler, sometimes like Pink Floyd, at times there's jazz, then it swings and finally he yodels, as do his three women on stage, they draw on classic themes, bring in Celtic folklore and then the band has the blues and the audience the groove. Above all when the 3 girls yodel, play the violin and sing, many stars of folk music would turn pale, be it down to the intensity, virtuosity, versatility or charisma - particularly with such young musicians. The duet in the Kaiser yodel between Hubert von Goisern and Maria Moling is impressive. The oldest and the youngest on the stage.
Time
and again it is the dainty Maria, who amazes with her talents, singing
effortlessly against the sound with a powerful voice and suddenly powerfully
driving the rhythm with felt-headed mallets on the upright tom. Meanwhile
the master is yodelling and Severin Trogbacher is playing 70s guitar.
Two-thirds of the way through the three hour concert comes the classic Weit weit weg: "Now the days are shorter and leaves are falling from the trees and there's already snow on the meadow..." The Stadthalle experiences perfectly staged world music. In the process Hubert has already done alpine rock, when the Schürzenjäger still couldn't really sing. When he rocks today it is in such a way that the rhythm carries you along, when he swings, then it snatches you up:
In a second the violin kidnaps the fantasy, carrying it away to a green Irish hill and when you open your eyes again you see an alpine meadow in the Salzkammergut, on which someone is yodelling. Then it strikes you that the violin belongs to a clown in Tuscany and Carlos Santana is playing guitar on the meadow. The bass player's name is Helmut by the way and he sounds a little like another bass-playing Helmut: Hattler. But sometimes like Stanley Clarke, too, but above all else, like Schartlmüller. All those on the tour are: Maria Moling (perc, voc), Elisabeth Schuen (viol, voc), Marlene Schuen (viol, voc), David Lackner (keyb), Severin Trogbacher (guit), Helmut Schartlmüller (b) and Alexander Pohn (dr).
After 30 minutes of encores a moved and enthusiastic audience leaves the hall and looks forward to the next Goisern concert.
"Give me more!"
Bielefeld.
He is a man who has had everybody eating out of his hand for years. And
so the title of Hubert von Goisern's current album shows great self-confidence. "Nothingness" could
be the remark of a spectator shaking their head as they leave a concert
early.
What the 55 year old Austrian and his young band do on stage in the Ringlokschuppen is on the contrary everything: hearty funk with jazz interludes, dub and a coolly added country dance - all that can happen in one piece.
Just the start is worthy of compliment, wherein the singer and multi-instrumentalist competes with his Styrian accordion against unleashed wild guitars and entices his audience from their reserve with rock of the hardest pace. The fundamental message of this very new piece called Showtime is: "Give me more of this music / hey, it can get much louder than this."
Fortunately the auditorium is not seated, which is something that could happen on the current tour. The bandleader maintains a friendly conversational tone in his talks, even if he has to talk at length. Von Goisern wants the show to be understood as part of his current adventure, the tour on a cargo ship converted to a stage, with which he has travelled Europe's great rivers. And so even in the cities without noteworthy water courses, two life belts are draped over the monitor speakers.
The tour that last year took von Goisern along the Danube to the Black Sea and most recently up the Rhine will have its finale in 2009 in Linz, which will be the European Capital of Culture that year. There where he moors, his concerts are accompanied by local musicians, who often come on board a few days in advance to prepare together. Von Goisern can also easily fill a three hour programme without guests, with his four-piece accompanying band and three tremendously lively female singers, who also handle percussion instruments from all over the world and put the cream on top of many pieces with pleasant violin sounds.
The jazz ballad Fön with its swollen, drunken speech song joins seamlessly to the the rocky, defiant I wü leben an - the singer was persuaded of difficult circumstances in the east, with conversations with people who fear the EU, because they think that what little they have will be taken from them - ironically analogue to central European worries.
Naturally the old songs in the musically so broad programme were the most popular, with their strong folkloristic weft, in which they juchitzer and yodel to the best of their ability.
Everything together
Hubert von Goisern in the Capitol Hannover
Hubert von Goisern has played in Mali, in Tibet and Egypt. The Austrian is a cosmopolitan, but one who says of travelling, "I need an inner mission for it". He has just ended an expedition by ship on the Danube, Rhine and Main. He docked at many places between the Black Sea and North Sea, gave concerts and thus - on behalf of the Capital of Culture Linz 2009 - made the eastward expansion of the EU visible in cultural terms. The Goisern is someone who brings people together, musically in particular. On Sunday evening in the well-filled Capitol in Hannover, he showed how you can bring together country dance, yodelling, rock, blues, jazz, gospel, funk and rap.
At first he stands in the dark on stage completely along, secretively, almost eccentrically, he elicits the first sounds from his accordion. Eventually electric bass and guitar join in and produce this typical sound, which since Hubert von Goisern has been around has been called "alpine rock". "Hello!" he just says briefly and "thank you", then he forgets his alpine origins for a while and with Showtime and Leben presents two great pieces of rock from the new record S'Nix.
What Goisern sings during the three hour show can't really be understood. He seems to deliberately protract his articulation so that the voice becomes pure sound. It slides into the monster of sound of the four accomplished musicians. Three singers add their voices and add further accents with violin and percussion. This is Goisern at his best: when he towers his compositions layer upon layer, as high as the Großglockner. But as tricky as the change in rhythm may be, he catches every listener again with the pivot to the alpine country dance.
Von Goisern doesn't appear to be a great talker. Only after about an hour and a half does he find the courage for a long speech and tells of his river journey. He also allows himself a dig at the election success of the Austrian right wing populists - then the music is what counts again.
Goisern loudly rocks the Alps
Bremen. It starts off like the Trad tour a few years ago: Hubert von Goisern has strapped on the button accordion and pulls and pushes from it tender alpine folklore. So why the big stage in Pier 2, one might wonder. The question is answered in the middle of this intro as the stage is filled and his comrades are not willing to play a nice folk rock.
They rock for all they're worth and von Goisern joins them with great spirit: Showtime is the second piece and it is what was called a "thumper" when rock 'n' roll was invented, that is, a song with a bold, driving beat that leads you to at least rock hard along with it.
Hubert von Goisern has done something that other musicians before him have successfully managed, in that he has separated from his old companions and looked for a young (and hungry) band. It was ostensibly for reasons of stress, since in the past two years von Goisern has sailed up and down the Danube, giving open air concerts everywhere. It was too taxing for his old comrades. But profoundly the new orientation has also contributed to substantial musical stimulation. Hubert von Goisern is now well into his 50s and the lust for playing felt by his seven companions audibly boosts him - just as was the case when musical colleague Wolfgang Niedecken dipped his band Bap into a similar fountain of youth.
In Pier 2 the vast majority of the audience, who have grown older with Hubert von Goisern, is seated comfortably on chairs though. They once cheered the rough alpine rock of the Aufgeigen stått niederschiassen phase in 1990, but now they'd rather have it quieter. There are audible calls for turning down the volume when von Goisern takes a conference break after the spacey Auseinandertreiben and the hard Haut & Haar.
But it's not as simple as that. The concept includes alpine rock with a sprinkling of reggae and certain Balkan rhythms, you can't play that quietly, the Austrian explains. The audience is split. In fact during the course of the evening there are quieter passages, which even have a certain elegiac touch, like the beautifully flowing song Regen, or the solemn and very quiet Die Liab. There are also the expected segments of yodelling, wherein von Goisern has competent yodelling partners again with his team of three ladies, Elisabeth Schuen even performing yodel coloratura that is a little reminiscent of the early Nina Hagen. But brash and loud rock music forms the primary colour to which the band soar time and time again. The trio of ladies don't just sing, the Schuen sisters play violin too and Maria Moling is also an emotive percussionist. Severin Trogbacher provides the rich guitar sound, Helmut Schartlmüller plucks the electric bass, at the keyboards sits David Lackner and on drums is Alex Pohn. It is the same lineup with whom the current album S'nix was recorded. But the gadulka player Darinka Tsekova is missing. She gives the CD a distinct Balkan finish, which is now only hazily distinguishable. Instead rock music wins here and in such an engaged manner and sometimes played so differently from the CD that many a song sounds adventurously new. Towards the end of the evening there is in this way a kind of Salzkammergut soul, before in the encore Goisern then digs up the old songs like Koa Hiatamadl (she's the one without thick calves). The hall goes wild - volume be damned! A distinctly strong and convincing show from Hubert von Goisern, who long ago mutated to a multi-instrumentalist, playing aside from the accordion, the flugelhorn, trumpet, alto horn, cow horn and guitar.
Yodelling with Goisern
At the end, with the applause of his enthusiastic audience, Hubert von Goisern admitted that he "gets a bit of the jitters" every time he appears in Hamburg. "Perhaps you're not here any more", he had worried. The well-filled hall at Docks on Reeperbahn proved the opposite to be true on Saturday. The Austrian musician played a solid concert on his tour for the new CD S'Nix; two hours jam-packed with new pieces and well-known classics.
Von Goisern and his seven-member, very young ensemble, made a brilliant start with Showtime; pure rock with strong electric guitar and driving rhythm. During the course of the evening von Goisern presented his musical versatility; the "homeland air compressor", as he calls his accordion, was something he brought out surprisingly rarely.
Aside from fast-paced numbers like Rotz und Wasser, a collage of the legendary radio broadcast of the World Cup game between Austria and Switzerland in 1954, there were also quiet pieces. The atmospheric duet Weit, weit weg with the South Tyrolean Maria Moling was especially beautiful. Familiar sounds were not missing either and so during the encore the Hamburg audience let themselves be carried away into yodelling along.
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Bad Goisern - 31st May 2008
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Bad Goisern - 31st May 2008
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Bad Goisern - 31st May 2008
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Bad Goisern - 31st May 2008
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Bad Goisern - 31st May 2008
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Bad Goisern - 31st May 2008
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Bad Goisern - 31st May 2008
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Bad Goisern - 31st May 2008
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Live in Bad Goisern - 31st May 2008
Photo: © Elli ChristlThe music's going crazy
In front of a gorgeous mountain backdrop, which later swallowed the darkness of the night, Hubert von Goisern declared a joyful "showtime" at Saturday's concert, a home game in Bad Goisern, presented by the OÖN, as part of his "s'Nix" tour.
4000 people fill the Hauptschule sports field. Just before 7pm the Goiserer footballers resigned themselves to their destiny, dropping out of the West sixth division. Only a few of those who had come to listen to the town's great son mourned this. On stage the mayor reminisced about 1991, when Hubert von Goisern united tradition and modern in the old Vereinssaal. "That was the best concert", says the mayor.
"Twenty years ago they would have hunted him down as a madman, and now they want to show him off," a local resident said, putting right the adulation.
"Behind me cool music is playing and everything's going crazy", Hubert von Goisern rocks in Showtime from the new album s'Nix. And thus finds just the right words for the evening that finally ends at midnight with the heartfelt encores of Weit, weit weg and Heast as nit.
In three hours the 55-year-old draws into his growing cosmos of sound - from the dub Auseinandertreiben with yodel and acute mezzo soprano from Elisabeth Schuen to the tingling ode to desire Haut & Haar, the groovy enjoyment of the moment (Leben) to the soft Die Liab, from the old Wildschütz Räp to the ecstatically beguiling I bi ån that ends in a gospel furioso.
On the first Danube leg of the Linz Europe Tour, which went east in the summer of 2007, Hubert von Goisern and his musicians, among them the fabulous and siren-like Ladinas Maria Moling, Elisabeth and Marlene Schuen, melded into a musical entity. As well as solo joy in playing, the conglomerate, in which the petite Bulgarian gadulka player Darinka Tsekova also finds a shining place, produces an intoxicating slipstream.
Can't you hear...
Hubert von Goisern plays in the Ritterarena
The storm clouds moved away and at 8.17pm Hubert von Goisern unpacked his accordion. Alpine rock is the order of the day in Kaltenberg and around 10000 spectators have made their way into the Ritterarena. Judging by the greying temples there are some among them who have accompanied Hubert von Goisern since he celebrated the first successes with the Alpinkatzen at the end of the 80s. Jeans and trainers find themselves next to traditional costume, dirndls and lederhosen are worn very conventionally, or mixed with trainers, T-shirts or flip flops. The folk music start with the diatonic is welcomed with alpine shouts of joy from the audience, but it soon changes to a harder pace. Fast guitar riffs and booming drum beats accompany the Upper Austrian's distinctive voice.
Musical whizz-kid
Less world music and anarchic alpine sound characterises the new album, more classic rock rhythms and wonderfully relaxed jazz passages. "Hey, come on, this is rock 'n' roll" comes at the start and the audience goes with it. Restrained certainly in their own physical articulation, but concentrated and sometime almost reverentially abandoning themselves to the stage performance. Or just happily celebrating with a jug of Kaltenberg beer in their hand. Hubert von Goisern shows his diverse ability, changing from the accordion to the trumpet, from brass instrument to guitar, he yodels, roars, evokes, shouts with delight, muses and dominates with his presence on stage. Alongside the band with Severin Trogbacher (guitar), Helmut Schartlmüller (bass), Alex Pohn (drums) and David Lackner on keys, three young background singers and musicians (Maria Moling, Elisabeth and Marlene Schuen) stand at Hubert von Goisern's side. They start with a simple refrain, impressing just a little later with vocal power.
Koa Hiatamadl
A Bulgarian musician is one of the party with her gadulka. Even when exotic instruments are used like the stringed instrument from Bulgaria, or the accordion, which plays a role in diverse folk, the basic rhythm lies in rock. Anarchic alpine sounds from earlier days surrender themselves to the middle of the concert, Hubert von Goisern certainly does not let the Hiatamadl sound.
Funk is the name of the game at the end with I bi an and there is a cheery antiphony between Hubert von Goisern and the audience, who at 10.30pm are rewarded with two HvG classics as encore: Heast as nit and Weit weit weg together with singer Claudia Koreck, who played as the warmup band.
What I have, I have to give
And that's exactly what Hubert von Goisern did on 30th May when he presented his new programme before more than 12,000 enthusiastic spectators in the Schloss Kaltenberg Arena. He christened it S'NIX, meaning the state that is everywhere, "even where there is nothing".
The world musician from Goisern in the Salzkammergut showed himself to be clearly more rock-oriented than on his previous CD, on which he presented Tibetan and African musicians and integrated Asiatic and particularly African rhythms into his songs, without leaving his musical roots from the alpine region all too far behind. On his tour last year on a ship on the Danube, leading him to the Black Sea, he grappled in particular with Eastern European folk songs, especially the Bulgarian - and has let many of these impressions flow into the new programme.
From yodelling to Carpathian ska
He was especially taken with one musician: Darinka Tsekova, who with the gadulka, a Bulgarian instrument strung like a violin, snatched lots of rock elements and offered real solo duels with guitarist Severin Trogbacher, which were then intercepted as unexpectedly as harmoniously by a Goisernish yodel. The audience cheered the whole band enthusiastically. But the world musician didn't leave it at that. With the two sisters Marlene and Elisabeth Schuen he has added two singers with classical singing training to his ensemble, who aside from their backing vocals, which brilliantly complemented the vocally flexible Goisern, also took on the violin parts. And with Maria Moling comes a third singer, who with her almost aria-like contributions brought pure classical elements to the concert and as percussionist harmonised beautifully with drummer Alex Pohn.
Goisern himself is developing ever more as a multi-instrumentalist. Aside from his excellent accordion and guitar-playing he also surprised with various brass instruments, but in particular with the trumpet, being reminiscent at time of Charlie Parker, then letting the diverse melody arcs fade with the tenderest playing à la Miles Davis. Goisern may currently be the only musician in Europe who can combine different musical styles so playfully, without a break ever appearing.
At the end of the two and a half hour concert Goisern drew once more on the time with the Alpinkatzen and let the evening fade with Weit, weit weg. He was perhaps never so close to the exhilarated audience.
HvG home games with a warm up in the Lehár and a grand concert before 4000 people
At half time on his Danube states tour for Linz09 Hubert von Goisern presented his new disc S'NIX at two home games, it is another captivating series of global folk music links, with its foundation in the Salzkammergut. After three days of rehearsals in the Lehár in Ischl, there was the obligatory warm up for insiders, friends and special guests. At the open air concert in Bad Goisern an HvG high mass was then celebrated with 4000 enthusiastic fans, intimate, jolly, soulful and with wonderful new sounds and singers.
Warm up concert in Bad Ischl - 28th May 2008
Hubert von Goisern: Warmup concert in Bad Ischl - 28th May 2008
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Warmup concert in Bad Ischl - 28th May 2008
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Warmup concert in Bad Ischl - 28th May 2008
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Warmup concert in Bad Ischl - 28th May 2008
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Warmup concert in Bad Ischl - 28th May 2008
Photo: © Elli Christl
Hubert von Goisern: Warmup concert in Bad Ischl - 28th May 2008
Photo: © Christoph Lenzenweger
Hubert von Goisern: Warmup concert in Bad Ischl - 28th May 2008
Photo: © Christoph Lenzenweger
Hubert von Goisern: Warmup concert in Bad Ischl - 28th May 2008
Photo: © Christoph LenzenwegerHubert von Goisern warms up in the Lehartheater
On Wednesday in the Lehartheater Bad Ischl it was hot in more ways than one: Hubert von Goisern invited friends and acquaintances, as well as those who had heard about the concert through word of mouth, to a warm up concert for his show in Bad Goisern and the second leg of his Danube tour.
It wasn't just the tropical temperatures that provided for a hot concert evening, it was above all Hubert and his band creating an unbelievable atmosphere, offering a moving, rousing concert. An excellent band with unusual musicians' personalities, a richly varied programme with the "old" well-known hits and wonderful new titles from the new CD S'Nix and arrangements combined with the unique atmosphere of the Lehartheater knew how to enthrall the audience. Heast as nit was the final, absolute high point of an unforgettable evening.
The band rehearsed for three days in the Lehartheater - it has become a tradition for Hubert von Goisern to present his tour programme here for the first time to a small audience in a club atmosphere.
The concert was organised by mayor Hannes Heide, who welcomed noted guests to the concert, including Linz 09 manager Martin Heller, Mag. Gerhard Gössl and his family and TW1 managing director Ing. Friedrich Urban.