A great reception in the full music theater across all generations! Not even the famous Thomas Quasthoff (63) would have expected that. Once a star of the opera stage and long since an exception in the jazz scene, not for the first time following Linz. And he promised to come back.
Scattered roses, including for interviewers asking him for news. “Nothing new, only my hair has become thinner,” was the succinct answer with the conviction that he had switched to the right genre ten years ago. It’s actually a pity regarding the change of direction with this warm-timbred, supple bass-baritone voice, which can now only be heard over the ether in all dynamic variations of groaning, hissing and spluttering with the help of the amplifier.
Quasthoff can afford the presentation for every taste of his audience. He is intelligent, of course highly musical, has charm, wit and humor, has several talents that he can fully exploit. The fact that he chats with the audience for every number increases his sympathy values enormously and overrides any limitations caused by his Contergan disability.
He enjoys jazz a lot because it allows music to be played more freely, but he admits that some numbers the audience would like to hear “better from a bar singer in red fishnet stockings and a short leather skirt”. “But you have to endure it.” Pity is faded out anyway on the evening when there is cheering and his program, following a rather slow build-up of tension, ended in standing ovations, so that Quasthoff – singing along to a Brahms encore in the hall – had to send the audience home.
Excellent is his backing band, jazz musicians Simon Oslender on piano and keyboards, Dieter Ilg on double bass and Wolfgang Haffner on drums. For a change, they produced themselves without the singer, and Quasthoff also entertained with a solo number. Otherwise, catchy classics with gripping jazz melodies might be heard throughout, for example by Bob Dylan, Billy Preston, John Lennon, “Summertime” by George Gershwin or John Hiatt. So let’s wait and see what Thomas Quasthoff will give us on our next visit.