FESTIVAL CLUB 2019

The Festival Club opens half an hour before the first screening. Here’s where you can meet, discuss films and enjoy our special late-night shows featuring freshly born bands, a journey to the seventies, hillbillies and disco. The doors are open, and you didn’t want to go home anyway, did you? There are concerts and readings, plus a bar and a lot of fun.

Anastasia Gubareva (voc, bass, git, keys) – Peer Neumann (drums, keys, acc, voc) – Lukas Fröhlich (tp, cello, keys, voc) -Jörg Gollasch (git, ubass, voc)

Chansons in Nouveau Heleä Polka style by the band from Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin. Founded just in spring 2019, Kala Tuli merge Finnish polka, French chanson, Russian rock and boogaloo from the 60s into a multilingual cross-over project. Led by singer and actress Anastasia Gubareva, the quartet create their very own, sweeping mixture of punk, pop and ballads.

Johannes Schleiermacher (sax, synth) -Max Andrzejewski (drums, synth)

Improving –that‘s what Johannes Schleiermacher und Max Andrzejewski want. More energy, more ecstasy, more taste, more emotions to their music.

Johannes Schleiermacher founded the band Onom Agemo and the Disco Jumpersin 2013 and is a fixed member of Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra, Shake Stew, Rodinia and Radio Citizen, amongst other bands. He has shared the stage with Hermeto Pascoal, Tony Allen, Perry Robinson, Shabaka Hutchings, the Poets of Rhythm and Karl-Hector and the Malcouns. His compositions can be described as hypnotic, psychedelic and groove-oriented.

Max Andrzejewski‘s energetic musical work between jazz, rock, contemporary composition and free improvisation has earned him concerts all around the world and numerous album releases with renowned labels such as Traumton, Pirouet, Act, Wizmar, Unit, Jazzhaus, Nwog and WhyPlayJazz. Jazz journalist Wolf Kampmann writes about him as “a musical perpetuum mobile whose energy could already power half the German scene and is likely to heat up half of Europe soon. A spontaneous composer on the drums blessed with unlimited creativity.

On the sound and spirit of the 70s. Jens Balzer, one of Germany’s most prominent cultural journalists, paints a colourful panorama of the seventies, from Woodstock and the landing on the moon through the oil shock and the German autumn of terror to the nihilism of punk music. A decade to change pretty much everything: hippies try out unheard-of lifestyles, antiauthoritarian education and the emancipation movement rearrange familiy and gender relations, world-spanning idealism meets apocalyptic fears. When, eventually, hackers build the first personal computer, it becomes very clear that it was there that our present started.

Jens Balzer, born in 1969, is a writer and columnist for Die Zeit, Rolling Stone and radioeins. He has written for Spex, Literaturen and Deutschlandradio and was deputy head of the arts supplement of Berliner Zeitung. In addition to his work as a journalist, he is in charge of the Pop Salon at Deutsches Theater and holds a position as a teacher for pop criticism at Universität der Künste, Berlin. He has worked as a curator at the Volksbühne in Berlin and is an artistic advisor to the Donaufestival Krems.

A crazy journey through Berlin, from 11 September till today. Gets you higher than flying. Donna Fauna, Kanarienquex and Weazel, three creatures from the the Berlin electro music scene, go through 11 September 2001 on LSD. The full blow of the event hurls them straight into the counterworld to their drug culture, once and for all. When they wake up, Berlin is gentrified. A fascinating trip through one and a half decades of contemporary history, brilliantly observed and written down with sparkling humour and witty wordplay.

Florian Kirmer, born 1975, is known as a songwriter and cabaret artist by the name of Prinz Chaos II. Since 2008, he has been developing a cultural community project at Weitersroda Castle in South Thuringia.

„Florian Kirner is one of the few young poets who not only write but are well-read; broadly and profoundly read, in fact. I’ve loved his poems and songs for a long time.” (Konstantin Wecker)

Fabiana Striffler (violn) -Declan Forde (piano) -James Banner (bass) -Michael Griener (drums)

Swing that music! Pieces by Duke Ellington, Stuff Smith and Fats Waller, ideal for dancing. Not just since Berlin Babylon, younger generations have rediscovered the popular music of the 1930s and 40s. Jitterbug and Lindy hop dance courses, swing dance parties attended in proper vintage apparel –such events are very popular in Berlin and other European cities, and musicians have revived a deep fascination for the music of that era, too.

Declan Forde came to Berlin from Scotland some time ago. Very obviously, the musicians he has gathered in his band love music and have fun when they play. So it’s going to be an enjoyable night, and of course, there’s no need to dress up if you just want to dance.

New film from the archive “I like being a farmer and would like to stay there” by Antje Schiffers. She offers farmers to paint their farm. “My aunt had such a picture. I was told that it was painted after the war, when only peasants had enough to eat; they were thus interesting business partners for painters.” In exchange for the painting, she asks the farmers to film and comment on their farm, their operation and their work.

This year it is:

More films will be presented according to the audience’s choice, accompanied by an international liquor bar.

Finally, after 10 years (!), Freddy Fischer & HIS COSMIC ROCKTIME BAND are coming back to the Festival Club, and about time, too. We’re looking forward to soul music, mirrorballs and excellent entertainment from Berlin. The ingredients: a groove that pulls you straight down to the dancefloor, the casual elegance of the songs Manfred Krug once sang, a mirrorball and, on top of it all, a tuxedo. And Freddy Fischer singing of love again and again…

Live: Ben Barritt & Band (pop, rock & funk)

Ben Barritt (voc, git) -Hannes Hüfken (bass, voc) -Connor Fitzgerald (keys) -n.n. (drums

The PROVINZIALE winds up with a funky party. Singer, guitarist and songwriter Ben Barritt, born in London in 1984 and firmly rooted in the local scene for many years, has worked with Bobby McFerrin and Kenny Wheeler, excelled on stage at the venerable Royal Albert Hall and toured Euope and Asia. At the moment, he and his band are marking out a musical and atmospheric ambiance full of vigour, inspired by British folk and folk-rock heroes such as Nick Drake and John Martyn but also by Stevie Wonder’s advanced gospel-and-funkmusic, the intelligent ideas of Steely Dan, the pop-music thinkers, and Joni Mitchell’s groundbreaking collaboration with jazz stars.

Festival Club Programme by Udo Muszynski Konzerte + Veranstaltungen
Equipment: Tim Altrichter (oton)
Bar: Katia Ziebarth / Till Kirchner
www.mescal.de
www.facebook.com/provinzialefestivalclub