Jamie Cullum @ Tollwood Festival

I’ve seen Jamie Cullum before. It was in November 2006 in the Gasteig in Munich, home of the Munich philharmonics. I had a seat quite far away from the stage. Although I did enjoy the concert, it was not like one of those “I need to see this again, preferably tomorrow!” kind of shows. That’s why it took some time until I saw him again this week.

I wonder if it was due to the fact that I was too far away or if Jamie got so much better over the years, but without a doubt the show last Monday was a “I need to see this again asap!” kind of show!

Jamie started the show with the Jazz classic “I got a kick out of you” and he got me from the first note! He makes these songs sound so fresh, new and funky.

During his two-hour show he takes his audience from Jazz standards to his original material to covers of recent songs like Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” in an unplugged version. He sang many of my favorite songs like “These are the days“, “Not while I’m around“, “Get your way“, “Mindtrick” or “All at sea“.

The way he sings and plays the piano just seems so easy and natural. He’s like a big kid whose favorite toy is the piano. You know how kids can be totally excited and “in the moment”… that’s what he seems like on stage. And he gives that energy right back to the audience, so you can’t help but smile and sing along. I really hadn’t expected the atmosphere to be that good, but the whole venue sang, clapped along and jumped up and down.

Oh, and before I forget, an honorable mention to the supporting act, San2 & his Soul Patrol. I hadn’t heard of them before the show but since have listened to their albums and really enjoy their music. Frontman San2 especially impressed me with his Michael Jackson dance moves. I wonder if he had ever aspired to become an MJ double once. 😉

All together a musical evening that begs for an encore!

 

Beyoncé – The Formation Tour

She slayed

Full Stop

I guess, if you sell out Amsterdam Arena with a capacity of about 50.000 in just 20 minutes, it means you made it!

If you make people queue for you that early that if people arrives at 11 o’clock in the morning, there are about a hundred people in front of them at their entry alone…;

If people pay 600€ to be as close to you as possible during a concert…;

If you can make people organize through social media to bring yellow and black balloons to your show and blow them up to wave for a specific song…;

If people from non-English-speaking countries know the lyrics to your oftentimes quite complicated, slangy, fast songs word by word…;

– …it means you have the kind of fans that won’t abandon you anytime soon. Bey has all that!

And she deserves it because she’s working really hard and imho she’s one of the most creative artists around these days. Her new album “Lemonade” and the accompanying film are innovative, artistically valuable, interpretative challenging, musically versatile and thought-provoking.

Although the show is less grave and difficult to access, Beyoncé continues to innovate – at least I haven’t seen any water on stage yet: For “Freedom” the whole B-stage was turned into a wadable pool where Beyoncé and her dancers perform their choreography. Visually stunning!

But as always she excels at the good old entertainment-ABC as well. Her vocals on songs like “Me, myself and I” or “1+1” are flawless and her dancing skills seem to enhance with each tour. I could stand there and listen to her and watch her for hours!

Her last song is “Halo“, which this time she dedicates to the victims of the attempted coup in Turkey. And after having wondered, as usual, why we did this while waiting for so many hours, we are so happy that we’ll do this again in Frankfurt in two weeks! See you soon, Queen Bey!