Mon. 11.November

21:00 The Melody Four GB

Don't say afterwards we didn't warn you... When confronted with this disaster-turned-combo, we are faced again with Thomas Bernhard's recurrent question: Is this comedy? Is this tragedy? The date assigned to this concert (the first day of Fasching - Austria's Carneval season) should be a forewarning of what is to come... though no doubt Good Friday might have been even more appropriate because when these three reputedly down-to-earth British pokerfaces (i.e. Co is a member of the Koglmann Pipetet and has an honorary doctorate from Kent University) begin to manhandle such defenseless things as jazz standards, hit tear-jerkers and Christmas carols in their own disreputable fashion, good taste is crucified (Coxhill: When Sinatra sings a love song, everyone cries.

When I do, they laugh.) For instance, when these anarchy-infected and yet politically ambivalent Marx-Brothers -- who developed their social stature as leading jazzmen in the famously desert-dry British improvisation scene -- launch into their Marilyn Monroe parodies (don't they ever look in a mirror?) you suspect you might be witnessing the first desperate symptoms of the Mad Cow Disease. When a triad of musicians who have been made into seasoned jazzmen on taxpayers' money spend more than a decade waiting for a fourth soul brother (Godot?) -- like a three-leaf clover waiting for a fourth leaf -- and spend their time piling up every possible anti-musical building block into a Tower of Babel that leans into the wind -- a stylistic catastrophe which they'll only knock down again in a sudden involuntary gesture -- what can this be but infantile regression? If however, in spite of our warnings, you decide to throw good sense to the wind, bring your therapist along to the concert, because once you're in the padded cell, it's too late for regrets.
KP
Admission: ATS 150.-


24:00 PianoNightLine Josef Novotny Trio

PORGY & BESS, SPIEGELGASSE 2, 1010 WIEN, TEL: 512 84 38