Excited Musketeer fan organises gig

People, do you know the blend of happiness and surprise after trying out something completely new and seeing that something work out well immediately? This blog post is about a recent “something” like that and at the same time about music, spontaneity, friends and one of my favourite venues in Leipzig.

First the music part, without many words; it’s best to simply listen:

That’s wonderful melancholic folk, isn’t it? Check out more songs from their album “Upon England’s Winter” here.

The spontaneous part of that story went like this:

Some weeks back I was people-watching at Leipzig city center during the Wave Gothic Festival, when I came across Musketeer and his friend Ed (Edward Merell) busking at Grimmaische Straße. Admittedly, I was already a bit high on endorphins, because I love costumes, especially those of the exuberant kind. There was a magical moment that caused me to stop and listen to Musketeer. I did not leave until their final song. Spontaneously,

  • a cross-dresser started dancing in the growing circle of audience. A man in a top hat and tails and boxers joined and they broke into ballroom dancing
  • I shot some pictures on my mobile
  • Musketeer asked me to share those via his Facebook fan page, because his phone had run out of battery.

So we were in touch and I got a mention in his travel diary… which appealed to my vanity.☺

In his post, he was full of affection for Leipzig.

Without much thought, I wrote Musketeer saying that Leipzig needed to listen to his music again, and that I could help, if he felt like returning. He agreed the same day.

Given that I had just returned a few months before after having lived for several years in Italy, had never organized a gig (only plenty of conferences and workshops for my day job), and don’t even play an instrument (shame on me), all I could do to realize the idea was ask a friend. I called up Ray, who used to run Georg-Schwarz-Café in Lindenau and helped Tabori Café with contacts for their wonderful jazz concerts. He introduced me to Julia, who runs the latter and luckily also likes folk music. As an important note: Tabori at Lindenauer Markt has become one of my favourite spots in Leipzig since I moved back.

The rest evolved organically, though admittedly not 100% smoothly. Tabori Café in the end was unable to host the gig, being forced into an unexpected summer break. But the people from next door jumped in to make sure Musketeer can still perform as scheduled in Leipzig:

Café Westen (Demmeringstraße 32) will welcome lovers of indie folk this Saturday at 8 p.m. Stay curious, check out the Facebook event page for more details and join in!

By Anne-Christin Tannhäuser

About the author:

Anne is a consultant for innovation and education, mainly working on projects to integrate technology, social media and web 2.0 approaches into teaching and learning. She also works as part-time researcher for a university in Berlin. Apart from that, she loves contemporary dance and creative music, mainly Scandinavian folk and electro/acoustic blends.

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