Today the Reeperbahn Festival started in Hamburg. At Europe's most important music industry event, over 400 new international talents will be presented in 90 venues until Saturday. This year, six entries will be submitted to the ANCHOR international talent award for jury president and David Bowie producer Tony Visconti. Among the favourites are the artists Celeste from the UK and alyona alyona from the Ukraine. The most important theme of the event is gender equality in music. More than 50,000 visitors are expected in four days, including 6,000 professionals from over 60 countries. This year's partner country is Australia.
Today's opening of the 14th Reeperbahn Festival was significantly bigger and more glamorous than ever before: Among others, Hollywood star Matt Dillon, Woodstock co-founder Joel Rosenman, producer legends Tony Visconti and Bob Rock, musicians Peaches, Kate Nash, Joy Denalane, Beatsteaks singer Arnim Teutoburg-Weiß, Johannes Oerding, presenter Markus Kavka, actor Lars Eidinger and many more walked the red carpet of the Operettenhaus Hamburg to attend the DOORS OPEN Show. The one-hour show, presented by Charlotte Roche and Ray Cokes, two legends of music television, gave an entertaining glimpse of what awaits visitors in the four days of the Reeperbahn Festival:
Dr. Günter Winands, Ministerial Director at the Commissioner for Culture and Media, emphasised the Reeperbahn Festival‘s increasing international significance and long-standing support of music and the music industry in his welcoming address.
The Senator for Culture and Media of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Dr. Carsten Brosda, focused in his speech on the narrative power of music, which tells the essential stories of all without a voice and making diversity possible in our modern society – the best weapon against emerging populism. With the example of the US women's band "The Highway Women", who managed to break the No. 1 of the charts in the men's domain Country Music with their presumably first feminist country album, he drew a clear parallel to the Keychange initiative and highlighted what is possible when female musicians connect and fight for a common cause.
In the show's first musical contribution, Canadian songwriter Leslie Feist (photo) showed why she has established herself as one of the most important indie rock protagonists in her career spanning more than two decades.
Thereafter, jury president Tony Visconti introduced this year's jurors of the ANCHOR - Reeperbahn Festival International Music Award with Bob Rock, Peaches, Kate Nash, Arnim Teutoburg-Weiß and the Australian presenter Zan Rowe. This year, six international talents from five countries were nominated for the competition: alyona alyona (UA), Celeste (GB), DRAHLA (GB), Feng Suave (NL), Moyka (NO) and The Hormones (CN). The ANCHOR 2019 winners will be announced by the jury at a gala on Saturday, 21 September at St. Pauli Theater.
Immediately afterwards, Angus Stone alias Dope Lemon represented his home country, this year's partner country Australia, whose music scene is currently one of the most exciting in the world. On Friday, 20 September, the Australian music export agency Sounds Australia will present 15 Australian acts on three stages at Molotow at its traditional Aussie BBQ.
The musical grand finale was reserved for German soul queen and Keychange ambassador Joy Denalane, who called for greater awareness of gender equality in the music world and thereby unofficially launched the European Keychange 2.0 initiative.
The aims and measures of the second phase of Keychange, the European Initiative for Gender Equality in Music, will be presented tomorrow, Thursday 19 September, at 11:00 am by Susanne Hollmann (EU Commission), Kate Nash, Peaches, Joe Frankland (PRS Foundation) and Alexander Schulz (CEO, Reeperbahn Festival) at the Keychange 2.0 press conference at Gruenspan. The presentation will be moderated by Puja Patel (Editor in Chief, Pitchfork).
While later in the evening Dope Lemon and Feist played their opening concerts in the Operettenhaus after the DOORS OPEN Show, the other end of the Reeperbahn saw with the NEON NASHVILLE showcase the introduction of country music at Reeperbahn Festival for the first time - and rightly so! The concert evening, realised in cooperation with the American Country Music Association (CMA), was a great success with the line-up of the songwriters Rachel Wammack (US), Ingrid Andress (US), Ilse Delange (NL) and Blanco Brown (US), as the most traditional of all American music genres is currently reinventing itself fundamentally like no other genre: In addition to the highly successful new proximity to hip-hop, an extremely high quota of female artists for years has ensured that country music is not only intended by and for cowboys.
Actor and director Matt Dillon (US) will be giving two keynote interviews in the coming days as part of the new Film & Future theme: On Thursday, 19 September, Steve Blame will interview the Hollywood star about The Art of Music & Film, and on Friday, 20 September, Matt Dillon and AC Coppens will discuss The Future Of Film.
A premiere took place today at the Planetarium Hamburg with the performance of Ekki Hugsa 360° by Icelandic musician Ólafur Arnalds. The audience left time and space altogether for one hour during the audiovisual installation and came out of the performance with glowing eyes. The multimedia show commissioned by the Reeperbahn Festival will also be performed at 06:00 pm on the next three days of the festival.
|
