For many people in Bonn, particularly teenagers and students, the Stadtgarten season at Alten Zoll is already an institution. An extension almost of the numerous teenagers often seen and heard in the shade of the University trees strumming guitars as the sun goes down. I’m sure that opening act in 2018, Cynthia Nickschas, has been one of those strummers. This time around though she had an audience of well over 2000 picnicking on the grass beside her. French electro Folkies Fergessen, Indie-Rockers Koj and Jazz quartet Radius completed the opening weekend of music under the setting sun.
It’s shortly after 11.30 am. I’m standing on the roof of the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn. It’s called the General Anzeiger’s Sommergarten Season but the question bugging me is, will it rain? I’m English so I assume the worst, but the two ladies onstage in front of me have come prepared – songwise at least, as Bonn’s own Anne Haigis and Thüringen born Ina Boo kick off in classic thumb to the nose at grey skies fashion with Tony Joe White’s ‘Out of the Rain’. Gauntlet firmly laid down by messrs Haigis and Boo, the grey clouds go scurryingly on their way – one force of nature conquered by another. Anne is here on the back of her latest disc ’15 Companions’ and within ten minutes she has several hundred companions hanging on her every lyric.