I just want to give some praise to Manuela Benetton’s concert series of 2019 at the Roter Salon, she has made some really excellent picks and we’ve been to a couple of memorable installations in the series already.
Unfortunately we haven’t had the time to go to more than two so far, but they were both really good. The first one was with Tomoko Sauvage and Andrew Pekler; Sauvage, who I’ve been wanting to see for a while personally, opened the show in a dreamy/meditative fashion and set the stage (quite literally) perfectly for the next artist. Pekler closed the evening in a great way, with his conceptual audiovisual show about lost islands, i.e. islands that were reported throughout history as found by e.g. adventurers/sailors and have since been impossible to find.
The second one, just two days ago, was with African (though Berlin based) artist Lamin Fofana and our longtime favourite Sarah Davachi (from Canada originally, but now LA based). I wasn’t too into the opening act, Fofana, to be perfectly honest, but Sarah made it a truly magical evening. On the occasions we’ve seen her perform before, the venues haven’t really done her justice sound wise (although the show at ACUD was pretty good, it should be said), but Roter Salon was a great setting for Sarah’s delicate brand of music and we were completely enthralled.
Of the upcoming shows in the series, I think I’m the most excited about the Bass Clef/Lea Bertucci pairing, although the Lino Capra Vaccina show sounds as if it could be worth going to as well. I don’t know too much about the latter, but his musical pedigree coming out of 70s avantgarde looks fascinating.