Düsseldorf Night of Museums


This Saturday the city's museums open their doors until the wee hours when you can explore each and every one of some 40 galleries, museums and arts spaces that make up the rich cultural landscape of Düsseldorf.


The Düsseldorf Night of Museums is a feast for all senses. For just €12.00 you not only have entry to all participating houses but you can take advantage of the complimentary shuttle busses that take you to all corners of the city to the various museums and galleries, many of which are open until 2am.
There will be many special events, films, performances and music. You can check out what is happening here.
The city takes on an even bigger festive atmosphere than usual, if you are new in town it's a really great way to get a feel for the city and so much of what it has to offer.


The ticket can be purchased in advance at many museums and galleries and ticket agencies.


Highlight has to be the public opening of El Greco at Museum Kunstpalast, RhineBuzz has been fortunate enough to be able to take a peek as the show is going up ... this much-anticipated exhibition will attract huge crowds on Saturday night but it will certainly be worth the wait to get in!

MKP Director Beat Wismer prepares for an interview as the
El Greco exhibition takes shape
©Bernd Ahrens Photography




Booklets of the programme can currently be picked up all over town in cafés, stores and the tourist information.

Jan Lisiecki at the Tonhalle


photo @Windsor Star


Described by BBC Music Magazine as “perhaps the most ‘complete’ pianist of his age, Canadian Jan Lisiecki is an exceptional young musician. 

At just 15 years of age Jan Lisiecki signed with Deutsche Grammophone. His biography, though short in years is already packed with highlights other musicians can take a lifetime to achieve, if at all.
In 2008 he was made a national Youth Representative by UNICEF Canada.
Come and experience the poetic playing of this young man yourself when the Tonhalle hosts a solo with Jan Lisiecki in the Helmut-Hentrich-Hall on Saturday April 21 at 6.30pm. Tickets available from the Tonhalle.
The programme  will include Bach, Beethoven, Litszt and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.
One of the most feel-good quotes I’ve read in a long time from Jan’s website, quotes from the audience: 
I just watched a documentary on CBC about your accomplishments while flying back home from Afghanistan and it was quite inspiring. I was there for the past four months flying the Chinook helicopter for the Canadian Air Force.
Your story gave me the bug to learn how to play the piano. Thanks,
Jason Arthur
Tickets, €18.00 available online here
Tonhalle Helmut-Hentrich-Saal
Ehrenhof 1
 40479 Düsseldorf
Many thanks to the Tonhalle for sponsoring two tickets for this concert for the English ‘We Love Music’ tour on April 7th along with two tickets for the Sternzeichen 10 concert on April 20.
We are fortunate in that we often have wonderful tickets to give away on this tour to all kinds of events and concerts, next public tour in German May 5. Info here. Public tour in English on request, email tours@rhinebuzz.com

Nadège Rochat & Rafael Aguirre Play Carnegie Hall



When I created RhineBuzz, the idea was to help those who spoke little or no German discover what is happening on the arts and culture scene in and around Düsseldorf. I had no inkling that RhineBuzz would become a melting pot of great talent and creativity.
The community comes up with gems and surprises for me again and again as we seem to attract the creme dé la creme in terms of the creative and gifted characters that form the international community of our area.

It was last summer when my Spanish friends Rafael Aguirre Miñarro and Luis Regidor told me a of a young musician they had met in Cologne. “You have to meet her Caroline - she’s so .... incredible!”
So now I have met Swiss cellist Nadège Rochat, and yes, she is quite something.
Just from the videos that I have seen so far she is a indeed a musical gem, meet her personally and she is self assured and absolutely enchanting.
I’ve yet to hear her play, but seeing her on film and catching the spark in my friends’ eyes tell me that the first concert of hers that I will experience will be quite, quite memorable and that, in so many more ways than one.
For Rafael Miñarro Aguirre, described as ‘The perfect guitarist’ by Akustik Guitarre Magazine and the winner of more awards for guitar than any other Spaniard, and award-winning Nadège Rochat are playing Carnegie Hall in New York City on March 14 2012.
I will be there in the audience, along with Luis Regidor, for what promises to be a wonderful evening of music and friends in the most exciting city in the world!
So, although this isn’t a piece about what’s actually happening in and around Düsseldorf, how could I not share what is being created here in our city and reaching the far corners of our globe?
I asked Rafa and Nadège about how they feel about playing such a legendary venue, this is what they told me:

Nadège: It's the third generation, in my family, that almost everybody plays music and the dream of each musician in the world is to play once in the Carnegie Hall, so I am very very happy to share the emotion of my first concert there with the few of them who will come to New-York to support me. 





Rafael: For me it means that I will try to collect my best feelings during the next days and then try to make everybody in NY happy, helped and surrounded by the amazing acoustics and atmoshere that the legendary hall has. It is quite a thing!








Luis, who won second place at the Shure Competition for Voice at the Montreaux Jazz Fesival last summer will be playing numerous sessions in New York this coming week and to his great delight he has been accepted to take part in a masterclass with Grammy winning Kurt Elling.

For a chance to see Luis in action in our own city, he will be playing at the Jazz Rally in May. Details to follow.
In the meantime I look forward to hitting the Big Apple with these extraordinary young people.


"We Love Music" the Tour

Dietmar Morand and I at the Kriwet Exhibition at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
©Manfred Schmidt, Düsseldorf
Eurovision might be over, but these tours can still be booked - 
please enquire to tours@rhinebuzz.com for details

 Four Fixed public dates, in German, with surprise guests and concert tickets to win:
Saturday at 3pm from the Tourist Info Altstadt:

 The tour will take place every first Saturday of the month
Next date July 7 2012

 This is how the tour began in Spring 2011:
The musical force of Düsseldorf is extraordinary, with protagonists such as Mendelssohn, Schumann, Kraftwerk and the Toten Hosen weaving its rich and influential history.
******************
Next week Dietmar Morand and I begin giving the first "We Love Music" - the ideal tour for the Eurovision Song Contest, when media eyes and Eurovision fans from all around the world will be focused on the city for this great musical event!
Düsseldorf Marketing and Tourism are offering 9 tours to the public in German and 9 in English from April 28 - May 14. All begin at 5pm and last 90 mins. They can be booked online here or at one of the DMT shops in town or at the main station.
I was commissioned by the DMT to write two new tours for the city, "Arts in Düsseldorf" and "We Love Music", so the last couple of months have been a frenzy of interviewing and getting to know so many people and institutions for these beguiling projects. 
The doors that have opened for me have been a real delight to enter and although combined with all the other stuff I have been asked to get involved with for Eurovision it's all been, and still is a huge amount of work, I'm really honoured to have been asked to take this on.
Added to this I've been putting together two ESC Shows for the BBC. One for national Radio Two, the Ken Bruce show and then also for BBC Radio Berkshire, The Andrew Peach Breakfast Show.
For the last few weeks I have already been accompanying the first of the 2,500 foreign journalists expected around the city for ESC, using much of the material from these two tours for the press work. The response has been very good, the press have left not with one mainstream article about the city as host to ESC but with enough material and ideas for several cultural pieces on the city. They discovered a hub of arts and music that they simply didn't know existed!
Talking new painting and new music with Emil Schult
A very special visit to the Krypta at the Robert Schumann School of Music which
 Emil Schult decorated, an absolute "insiders tip" in Düsseldorf
Tim and I crawled around 22 metres up high in the dome of the Tonhalle with sound engineer Andreas Kainz to understand how the Tonhalle actually works!
VIP Shuttle for Scottish journalist Lillian McDowall
To all those that invited me into their studios, homes and party basements :), thank you; for the phone numbers that have been passed onto me; the contacts that have generously been shared; for the time you have given me, thank you. And most of all for the trust and the smiles.

Thanks to Tim. You have taken on the challenge of working with me admirably 
and are doing a fantastic job!

Strobe lighting at the recent Creamcheese Revival Party. Creamcheese probably showed Germany's first strobe lightning in the 1960s

No doubt after Eurovision these tours will continue, we have mountains of material to share with you and delicious morsels of musical surprises for the tours. Other subjects are in the planning, and we do realise that we will have to offer them at a later time. I've already received numerous emails saying that the time is too early. But the RhineBuzz community have been asking me to begin tours again for a while now and so here we are, it's a great start!

 Tim and I have thoroughly enjoyed the research and the music for these tours and we are looking forward to the next few weeks, the run up to Eurovision and all the city events that will be going on enormously!


Come join the party!

Die Grosse Kunstausstellung NRW Düsseldorf 2012



Richard Deacon
©Bernd Ahrens Photography 

Take a look at the Grosse Kunstausstellung NRW Düsseldorf 2012 at Museum Kunstpalast until March 18.
This is a show of art to buy - eclectic, at times amusing and certainly inspiring, with  a focus in 2012 on photography.
The photographs of prize-winning Walter Vogel are quite wonderful.
Anne
©Michael H.Rohde


If you buy here you are contributing in keeping this great tradition alive and who knows which great artists of the future you may be supporting.

Silvia Liebig
Pimp my Head 

This year also sees a special section of sculpture students of the class of Professor Richard Deacon, Turner prize winner in 1987 and recipient of a CBE in 1999 for his considerable work in the arts world in Britain. He is currently teaching at the world-renowned Düsseldorf Art Academy.
Speaking with Richard Deacon
©Bernd Ahrens Photography 

 A rich catalogue has been produced to accompany this show and for a special deal of just €20 you receive entry for two and a catalogue.
Highly recommended!

Museum Kunstpalast
Ehrenhof 4-6
40479 Düsseldorf


Open until 9pm on Thursdays

A Musical Walk Through Time


RhineBuzz is pleased to present the first own event of 2012 on March 1 2012 at 7.30pm with Julia Coulmas, a bright, young soprano from Florida and former principle singer with the Tampa Bay Opera. We are now very fortunate to count her as a vibrant new member of the RhineBuzz community!
'A Musical Walk Through Time' will feature popular Broadway and opera highlights accompanied by Michael Carleton on piano.
We are also especially happy to be hosting this at the Weinzimmer on Burgplatz.
It never ceases to astound me the incredible talent of those that write to RhineBuzz. Julia contacted me recently and soon we had a her singing at a private event, and then again on the first 'We Love Music' tour of the year. I think it's true to say we were pretty astounded at the marvellous voice that came out of this very tiny woman, we even had a guest with a tear in his eye on the recent tour, so it is with all the more anticipation that we look forward to a lovely evening of wine, fine melodies and two most wonderful artists.
Do come and join us!
Tickets, €10, may be purchased by sending an email to: opera@rhinebuzz.com





Julia Coulmas and Micheal Carleton

"A Musical Walk Through Time"

March 1 2012 at 7.30pm

Weinzimmer

Burgplatz 12

40213 Düsseldorf

Schumann Festival 2012




"Get Romantic"' is the tempting motto for the Schumannfest 2012. It’s an invitation to get up-close-and-personal with the sensitivity of Robert Schumann, ‘the’ German romanticist, exclusively interpreted through outstanding names of today’s music scene. His desires and despairs, his passions and personalities will be recreated in ways that makes Robert Schumann more modern than ever! One glimpse into the programme and the wide spectrum of creatively inspired ‘labours of love’ awakes a curiosity to discover more. From the Emerson String Quartett’s “Transatlantic Festoverture” homage to the beginnings of the Lower Rhenisch Music Festivals, to “The New Romantics” with the electronic wizardry of Hauschka and the magic of My Brightest Diamond, right up to the music-comedy of “A Little Nightmare Music” with over six million views on YouTube, it’s obvious that the Schumannfest 2012 will captivate audiences of all sorts like never before! 


The Intendant of the Schumannfest, Michael Becker, enthusiastically invites listeners to experience the Schumann that appeals to all age groups, both 'newbies' and the well-versed to the Romantic era of Schumann. The next Schumannfest takes place from May 24  to the 4 June 2012, musically connecting with the Dusseldorf Jazz Rally at the end of May. "We Love Music" here in Dusseldorf, and May will be something to really look forward to! 
Book now, and 'Get Romantic'!
Tickets also bookable through RhineBuzz

There will be extra "We Love Music" tours on offer during the Festival including press and public tours in English. Please contact tours@rhinebuzz.com for details.

Tim D. Morand
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