In my review of Alma Naidu‘s excellent concert in Dottendorf from 2023 I was sure that her next release would take the lady from Munich away from small intimate concerts. For that reason we were lucky indeed that her sophomore album ‘Redefine’ has taken a while to be released. It meant that we got a second chance to hear this very talented young singer-songwriter/pianist in a small, intimate atmosphere, with the added bonus sound of birds chirping outside the hall between songs.
So here he was, onstage for the first time in Bonn. Richard Thompson. Described by comedian/musician Billy Connolly affectionately as “The Man who kicked British Folk Music’s A*s!”, and the man listed #19 in a ‘Rolling Stone’ poll for ‘Greatest Guitarist of all Time’. But if you visited Bonn Harmonie on Wednesday expecting something musically akin to ‘Johnny Rotten meets Jimi Hendrix’ then you would have been disappointed. These descriptions came based on Thompsons duels in the early ‘70’s when he was duking it out with Dave Swarbrick’s lightning-speed fiddle solos. Tonight’s show had not a Stratocaster or fiddle in sight. It relied purely on an acoustic guitar, and a songbook spanning sixty years. And it was spellbinding…
“When it comes to the Blues, I don’t like to mess around with the formula too much” says Will Wilde about his new release ‘Blues is Still Alive’. Will is true to his word on that score. There are echoes of the best of the best blues harp legends on here. ‘Don’t Trust Me’ evokes Sonny Boy 2’s rasping harp style, ‘Gypsy Woman’ calls up Muddy Waters with it’s title and ‘St James Infirmary’ in its style, whilst ‘Wild Man’ finds obvious DNA patterns musically with the very first electric blues harp legend Little Water. Wilde goes on to say “I wanted to prove that the blues is as relevant today as it’s ever been”. and again the Man has hit all the home bases on that one too. His lyrics, particularly on the title track are on the button with regard to topicality too: A woman working hard to ‘just’ be able to pay the rent and feed her children, as a man is Kicked down “for the colour of his skin” in a World divided where “everybody’s taking sides…”. Yes indeed, the Blues is, these days, still very much alive.
It’s under a year since Larkin Poe took home a prestigious Grammy Award for best Contemporary Blues Album with ‘Blood Harmony’. Little more than a couple of weeks since they appeared with Ringo Starr and played live on the Jimmy Kimmel Show on US television. Mere days ago they were on the legendary Grand Ole Opry stage in Nashville. Today (27 Jan) they’re appearing on a tiny stage at Xperion (behind the Saturn store) in Cologne, in front of maybe a hundred invited guests. “Why?” I asked Rebecca (the dark haired of the talented sisters). “Because we like meeting people!”.
It’s not so long ago that I was writing about the Kulturzentrum in Dottendorf as an ‘insider tip’. After visiting the opening Dottendorfer Jazznacht concert of 2025 featuring top jazz vocalist Jeff Cascaro it’s clear that those days are now gone. All 190 tickets were sold out well in advance, and the same is also true of next month’s appearance by Jakob Manz & Johanna Summer. If the quality of Jeff Cascaro’s appearance is a sign of things to come, then I suspect the quantity of tickets is the only bad news for Dottendorf’s Jazz lovers.
It seems as if, rather like Santa Claus, Simon Kempston has always paid us a visit every December. Such is the allure of applause and the chance to sing ‘Jock Stewart’ at Folk Club Bonn that Simon always has a new CD to offer us to secure his place as special guest (this year’s ‘My Dreams Are Theirs’ is a corker too!). Simon has become a much-loved regular, but this December saw a far less regular event, a first even – MC John Harrison had officially sanctioned the use of amplification. What!!! All will be revealed…
The return to Bonn of one of my favourite Jazz guitarists had a special twist this week. Torsten Goods was celebrating, not just his return to Dottendorfer Jazznacht, but also his 44th Birthday. The George Benson-inspired son of an Irish mother and German father was in good spirits and top form for his show.
The opening concert of this year’s Stadgarten Season at Alter Zoll was a showcase evening for JazzTube. An interesting musical mix, with the Leon Dehne Quintet providing a more traditional Jazz show after which Bernard & The Mibus indicated how young Jazz musicians are taking the music – with a strong hip-hop element to their musical mix. It will be interesting to see what the Kulturamt here in Bonn has put together in 2024.
