For me, the first signs that Summer is drawing to an end are not the days getting shorter, nor the cooler temperatures. The real sign for all concert goers is that the open-air seasons all begin coming to an end. It’s a sudden change too. The last fortnight saw the finish in 2025 of Kunst!Rasen’s top-drawer season and also the finish of Unter der Zeder’s ‘Klein aber fein’ offerings. Saturday it was Stadtgarten that switched on it’s lights and speakers one last time for this year with the appearance of two very talented young ladies – Ukraine’s Laura Marti and France’s Yzoula.

Laura Marti is now based in Cologne but was born in Kharkiv and moved to Kiev.  A quick look on the internet shows that she has been a pretty successful singer in the Ukraine over 15 years. Initially as a Jazz singer but taking on more and varied styles as her confidence and experience grew. 

Certainly it’s a confident young lady that takes the stage at 7pm as a crowd of picknickers steadily grows on a cooler than earlier in the season but still pleasant August evening.  What’s most noticable however is that Marti is some 8+ months pregnant.  The result is that she spends a lot of time sitting down to sing – but it does not affect the emotional power of her singing one iota and her band provides good background cover – with the addition of some prerecorded back vocals – and I even detected a non-existent brass section in the mix at one stage.  But what mattered of course was the vocals, and tonight also the lyrics. 

There is a song that has all the hallmarks of a Eurovision pop song except for its lyrics.  Simply titled ‘The 24th’.  Its message is powerful: “They came on the 24th.  Used brutal illegal force.  Raised their weapons, blew open the doors of our normal life”  But the final verse is defiant “Just get off, get off my land.  I will build it all over again!” There is a video to the song featuring a Ukrainian dancer who Laura met in Cologne.  On the eve of the video shoot, the young girl’s house was destroyed by Russian bombs. 

But don’t go away thinking Laura Marti’s music is all doom and gloom.  There is an enormous positivity about the lady that is underscored by her song “I Decided to be Happy” with it’s closing advice to all of us in these uncertain times – “Decide to be happy.  Otherwise why do we live at all!”  It’s true too that the lady has a good deal to be happy about  right now with her upcoming birth after finding in Germany the man of her dreams guitarist Philipp Koebele, for which pictures of the two smiling together onstage tell the story.  Music with feeling, and strength with both heavy and light touches, but most of all it was clearly music with passion, and even those listeners back on the grass embankment will have caught that emotion I’m sure.

Yzoula spent several years touring the world with french rockband La Femme, before deciding to go it alone on a career path that has most recently involved collaborating with Italian composer and arranger Louis Fontaine. The result of her time with La Femme and with Fontaine is a hypnotic style of music that harks back at times to the Psychedelic rock of the late ’60’s and bands like Velvet Underground. The lady herself looks a little as if she has stepped onto the stage in Bonn from a black and white sixties french movie. Perhaps even out of a sixties recording studo with Serge Gainsbourg. There is certainly more of the Jane Birkin about her appearance and musical style than of the Zaz. When she sings ‘Da Daa Da Dam’ it’s truly hypnotic even without the Acid, just a cool beer suffices.

It’s relaxing to watch the sun go down at Alter Zoll. Shadows begin falling on the grass embankment overlooking the stage and the first people seated up by the Lippertz Beethoven statue become misty before disappearing in the enveloping darkness. Gradually, row by row, those seated in front of them disappear too, until only those people under the stage lights remain visible – and all eyes are on the enigmatic Yzoula. Her band are good too, but the lady herself is like a black and white magnet for the eyes. I did try to find out more, but all internet roads seem to lead to the current collaboration with Louis Fonatine – ‘Des Animaux Pires Que Moi’. I would not be very surpised at all to see/hear a lot more from Yzoula on the World Wide Web in the coming months – If there is a call amongst young music fans for Psychedelic tinged retro-french Chanson with a rock edge then Yzoula has it covered. For the record, it was Yzoula, with a nod to the Country she was playing in, that brought the 2025 Stadtgarten Season formally to a musical end with an energetic version of Nena’s ’99 Luftballons‘. “I did study German for several years – but all I can remember is ‘Guten Abend’ and Aufwiedersehen” she apologetically admitted with a grin.

So, the end of another year then for Stadtgarten’s open-air season. A big thank you especially to Bonn’s very own Rock & Pop representative at the City of Bonn, Hans-Joachim Over (probably known to more people as HaJo than by his real name). Thank you’s too for all the institutes and organizations who present up-coming talent each year, to the Ministerium for Kultur & Wissenschaft NRW, and to Hotel Königshof (who provide accomodation for long-distance musical acts). Also a rare thank you to the resident across the river who complains about the noise – changing the stage direction a couple of years ago ostensibly to mitigate complaints, was a masterstroke. With the current placement parallel to the grassy embankment there has been a clear increase in audience sizes – making this one of the best years ever for attendance. Of course, the quality of the music also plays a part.

My favourites – and young bands to watch from this year (although I admittedly only caught half the programme) were undoubtedly The Trouble Notes, Crimson Bloom, and Yzoula. All of which prove that you DO get something for nothing these days, and not just that but it can be very good indeed. See you at Alter Zoll in 2026!

Clemence Quelennec