In Bern the new concert series “Moments Of Music” was celebrating its premiere on this weekend. A friend had won tickets and so we went to see the concert of Christophe Maé and Lisa Stansfield. Christophe Maé I had never seen live before. Lisa Stansfield I even only just knew the Name. We let us surprise so.
Low expectations even with a great line up
I never expected it to become my favourite event, even the line up with Anastacia, Stefanie Heinzmann, Jamie Cullum and Tom Odell was totally great. The concert was completely seated. The half empty Kursaal on that evening wasn’t exactly promising. The advantage there was, that we weren’t disturbing anyone, when we were standing. None was sitting behind us. The view on stage wasn’t very great while sitting. The handrail of the balcony was very disturbing.
We partly felt a little underdressed, but luckily we weren’t the only ones. Everything was somehow very business-like. The audience was generally middle aged. Differently to his concert at X-Tra recently, with this prices you could barely expect any teens. With Christophe Maé and Lisa Stansfield it of course was clear, why there was an older audience visiting the concert. Lisa Stansfield was successful in the 80s. There was the question, if we might be too young for such an Event…?!?
Great band
Christophe Maé and the band were electrifying from the very first moment. It definitively wasn’t a concert to stay sat. In the beginning the sound was weird – even we were sitting directly over the mixing table 😉 – what luckily quickly became better. I didn’t understand much of the French lyrics, but the songs sounded really great. They played very rhythmic pop songs mixed with various styles.
Christophe Maé kept letting people sing along. He kept playing the harmonica and even sat down in the audience with it. With his singer/dancer he was moving constantly. Very soon after the concert had started, they already were standing in front of the stage and even were dancing across the room. They took some woman from the audience to dance with in front of and on stage. In-between they played some beautiful quite ballades.
It was a variable and energetic concert. The vibes in the audience were rather just okay though. Maé could get them off their seats, but most sat down again with the last tune of the song (I mean, why?). The good atmosphere in-between barely made it up to the balcony.
Quickly we agreed: Christophe Maé’s concert was super, we’d prefer seeing him at a normal, “prober” concert, like at Bierhübeli or Kaufleuten.
Early ending of the evening
After a short break they continued with Lisa Stansfield. We didn’t know her at all, so we’ve been a little surprised by the intro. It sounded circus-like, the rest like something from the 80s (afterwards clear why). We didn’t like it and so we decided with the 3rd song, that the evening ended for us at this point.
We can’t really complain as we hadn’t paid for. The concert of Christophe Maé was really great from the bands point. It sure would have been interesting to attend the other two concert evenings to compare.
Was the audience and the atmosphere the same or maybe better?
Were the concerts better visited?
The event has to be like that somehow. Exclusive and more uplifted. But my personal “Moments of Music” generally look differently, so I had planned my weekend, even despite of Tom Odell, differently.
I thought the line up was great. The concert of Christophe Maé I’d recommend for sure. But the rest needed to be differently. There’s so much more to a great concert than just a good line up.
Have you been there? Then tell me in the comments about.
Info about Christophe Maé and the festival you can find here:
www.christophe-mae.fr
www.momentsofmusic.ch
