LIFE BIG AND FREE
It is a beautiful picture that JonnyVersum creates of himself in "Drahtseilakt": There the artist enters his paradise, first chills a round "on the swing in the morning sun / the guitar sings with delight" - it is wonderful. The big city and the world with all its problems are far away, thank God! But then he hears the roar of jets above him, and suddenly the village idyll is over. Shit, the gentle singer asks himself, "don't I get anything / of the threats out there"? And first of all, somewhat indignantly, he writes a peace song.
Behind JonnyVersum is the "small, fine singer-songwriter identity" of piano maker Jonas Fischer from Bliesekow near Rostock. On his debut album "!Draht! Rope! Akt!" the artist turns out to be an existential seeker, contradictorily addicted to freedom and love, departure and security. His songs, born at the campfires of countless paddling tours along the Mecklenburg Lake District, are full of question marks and yet in the end always celebrate "this life" that "we all live".
It is a great fortune that the "Klaviedermacher", as he calls himself, has finally thrown wide open the doors of his northern German workshop to delight the world between Bliesekow and Berlin, Hanstorf and Hanover, Rostock and Rügen with his songs. For in his self-imposed seclusion he has created songs that concern each of us. It is the search for the right life that drives JonnyVersum, personally as well as politically. This breadth gives his work relevance - far beyond the casual charm of his live performance.
His fixed stars are the guitar and the piano. When he revels or meditates at the piano, he is completely with himself and sometimes creates a maelstrom that listeners can't (and don't want to) escape; sometimes kindred spirits from Keith Jarrett to Ludovico Einaudi greet them from afar. On the guitar he is more powerful, more direct, he has always developed his own driving rhythm, which forms the framework of his songs and acts almost like a recognition mark. The interplay of instruments keeps his musical universe in balance. One hears fascinated one and at the same time always already, always longs for the other.
But the art of JonnyVersum also consists in the fact that he unites seemingly incompatible things in his songs. Is he a melancholic? From experience, yes! His songs are (also) about failed life plans, farewell, pain and - again and again - new beginnings. At the same time, he manages to enchant us with a light hand and voice in the very next moment. He is sometimes a sonny boy, sometimes a man of pain - and that is no show. On stage, at least, he embodies both credibly.
In "Rainbow" JonnyVersum, the "Inhabitant of Life", fans out his entire inner colorfulness and lets his iridescent self shine as a "chord of light in the realm of the soul". Poetic to blissful comes "Schöne Schatten" (Beautiful Shadows), a love song in which the foreboding of the end resonates from the beginning. "Schüttel deinen Arsch" is an announcement to all scaredy cats who are still waiting (and at the same time an appeal of the artist to himself). Finally, in the surfer's anthem "Einen Gang zurück" JonnyVersum euphorically celebrates the small and big moments of freedom, lets the sea rush, sanctifies the evening light. Here the long undefined longing finally finds its goal: "Please tell me when evening comes / and the sun hits its shadow ..."
His masterpiece, however, is "Acid Rain." This song soars to the heights of our times without false pathos. Climate catastrophe, refugee crisis, corona pandemic - it's all in this song about the earth. But never superficial, but elegiac and yet also hopeful interwoven. Holy seriousness with a human face - JonnyVersum at it's best. Or in the singer's very own words:
"The greatest world has its limits / it's time to stand by it. / The first one opens the door / the last one turns off the light. /
Let's go."
Drums: Axel Meier
double bass / electric bass: Andreas Böhm
Piano: Philipp Krätzer
acoustic guitar/ electric guitar: Ulf Achanbach
Viola: Katja Braun
Reservations: 0381/ 203 60 84
Advance ticket sales:
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or online:
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The box office opens one hour before the start of the event.
