That musician

1 February 2007

A Brit watching an Austrian perform at the Swiss Music Club in France. Surely that deserves some kind of “Outstanding Achievement in Being Cosmopolitan” Oscar?

The reason I was in Cannes ten days ago actually goes back to 2nd August 1998, when my brother turned on the TV in our holiday chalet in Germany and came across a concert that kept the two of us transfixed until the early hours of the morning. We had no idea what this crazy guy on stage was singing about as he played rock music on an accordion and also turned his hand to the guitar, trumpet and cow horn, but we couldn’t tear ourselves away; the music really got us. The musician on stage was Hubert von Goisern.

The story of the eight and a half years since then involves music, letters, unexpected replies, endless Googling, the seed of an idea for a website, meetings, a wonderful new friendship, countless early flights to Germany, Austria and Switzerland, a million emails, stress, amazing concerts, tears, generous people, nuisance people, lots of laughter, being acknowledged in front of a crowd of 5000, international friendships, my German skills improving tenfold, meeting an Egyptian superstar, translation after translation, another idea, near disaster, total joy, a love of yodelling, an iPod filling up with songs in Austrian and Bavarian dialect, a stack of German dictionaries on my desk, opportunities and inspiration.

If you want to do something a bit cultural today, why not go to Amazon and listen to a few samples of Hubert’s music, or go to YouTube and watch a clip from the same concert film that caught my attention, learn to yodel, go to the website I run and read about some of Hubert’s past projects and what’s happening in the summer. He’s a charming, talented, spellbinding man who lives for music … and I think one of his CDs would fit just perfectly in that space on your shelf.

Click for the set

Posted in: friends, photos, travels, work

Comments

2 Responses to “That musician”

dreamdust » Didn’t see this one coming…
17th May 2007 @ 8:41 pm

[...] removed, but afterwards lost all interest in continuing my education beyond A Levels. Through a long story I fell into web design and translating. Then I started developing my photographic [...]
dreamdust » In which you learn the German for “skid marks”
20th September 2007 @ 11:01 pm

[...] get to the actual reason I was in Bratislava at the end of August: music. I’ve told you about my musician before and having cursed the concert in Vienna with a rainstorm that damaged the stage and [...]