OL @ Kulturkirche, Köln, 9 Oct 2009

The timing couldn't have been more unfortunate for me. Just 4 days before Ottmar's Munich show I had moved to Brussels. So I thought about it, including that Ottmar might be distracted by many other things that day, and finally decided to try and make it to the Cologne show. And I did it! Yippie! Finished work a bit earlier, jumped on a train, changed trains 2 times (in Liège and Aachen), headed straight up to Ebertplatz in Cologne to catch the earliest metro possible (Google Maps help a lot) and arrived right 1 hour before the show in Kulturkirche started. Bought a ticket and found a tiny free seat right in the first row.

Kulturkirche is a nice venue. As Ottmar already mentioned in his blog, old Lutheran church with cultural events taking place there now, built in small bar where they sell Kölsch (famous local beer), Brezen (really!), and wine ...

I had the impression that the church was filled up to the last row in the end, so the atmosphere was good and it was rather cozy warm inside the (normally cold) hall.

I happen to stumble into Jon before the show started and yes, he did remember me from last year and we had a nice little chat that we continued after the show. I must say that I hardly saw Ottmar, briefly after the show, a quick hello, but there were quite a lot of fans around him demanding taking pictures, signing stuff or simply chatting a bit. He talked good about Carl-Orff- Saal in Munich and I was glad that he liked it there after last year's icy cold mirror tent.

The stage was interesting. As it was a church, on the left and right side of the normal altar area you found bible quotations engraved into the walls - and in the middle the slide show screen were later passed the pictures, little videos and some words and expressions Ottmar himself chose ("Zittern wie Espenlaub", and I suppose some Eliot Pattison?). Nice, really nice.

Ottmar appeared a bit more tense to me than the last times I saw him on stage but I might be mistaken here - not the best to read people's minds. After all, it was the 8th concert in 9 days! The Q&A did not really flow but in the end it is the music the visitors came for. And the playing went wonderful, as we are used to it for many years now. Only at one point he had to stop playing and retune a stubborn string but did that with a remarkable quickness.

I will not post a playing list anymore like I did in the past. If somebody who passes by likes to ask, don't hesitate to do! Just some glimpses:

Ottmar started playing some songs of "The Scent of Light" in a row until he switched over to earlier stuff like "Santa Fe" or "Snakecharmer". (Btw, after the show one guy asked him if he ever played tunes like "Summantra". Obviously in Germany for a long time what you could get in the stores were mostly "The Hours between Night + Day" and "Nouveau Flamenco", of course.) I was surprised and did enjoy it very much to hear "The Winding Road" (from "Leaning into the Night"), and for a brief moment I wondered if "Prelude No. 3" would follow (which did not). A very big thank you for the second encore, which were the "Night Travelling Raindrops" (from "One Guitar") in a totally improvised way. I would LOVE to have a recording of such an improvisation, no matter in which quality!!

The slideshow was fun. Beautiful how Ottmar grouped photos to colours. In the beginning "yellow" was the dominant tone, for example. The photos and the music combined for some fantastic imaginations. Impressive how he started the second set with "The Longest Night" (from "Winter Rose") while the dominant colour of the sliding pictures was red, a darker, warmer tone that fitted perfectly for deep night thoughts. During the encore the slideshow started right from the beginning. I did not know that it was more or less explicitly timed but maybe I was the only one noticing this at that very moment.

After the show I headed to my small hotel in "südliche Innenstadt" (southern city centre), a bit groggy but happy as can be, and fell sound asleep soon.

Many happy returns!

P. S. Seems that the guys are very much looking forward to the Japan shows in November ... :)