I fall into blackness
With no stars to guide me
A bottle green sleep
With no one beside me
Outside it's cold
A wild wind's blowing
And I've numbed my sole heart
To keep it from knowing
That you, like this night,
Like this hour which is passing

:: ANNE CLARK ::, the Grande dame of New Wave, once again favors the essential way to perform her art and embarked on an acoustic journey through Germany, dubbed "Enough-Tour". She got accompanied by long-time collaborator and highly skilled pianist :: MURAT PARLAK :: and young German cellist :: JANN MICHAEL ENGEL ::. A piano, a cello, and the unique voice of ANNE CLARK promise a wonderful concert experience.

:: pics ::

Having missed her acoustic shows in the past, I was more than happy that I know was able to experience such wonderful evening. It was the last show of this 2 ½ stint in Germany that brought to Düsseldorf’s finest • Savoy Theater •. It’s an old cinema with comfortable velvet seats, where you have great sight onto stage from everywhere. Only little downer for me was the fact that I was only allowed to take photos from where I got placed, which even bothered other fans by the cam’s shutter noise. However, the audience corresponded with the ambience: not the youngest ones anymore, lofty style. Jeans and sneakers were rarely seen tonight.

Shortly after 8pm MURAT PARLAK and JANN MICHAEL ENGEL got on stage and started with Journey By Night on its end ANNE CLARK joined in too, heartily welcomed. Most time, the petite Brit sat still on her chair with closed eyes, kind of reserved, and intoned her own compositions as well as newly arranged literary settings of poems with her unique spoken word performance and always accompanied by MURAT PARLAK and JANN MICHAEL ENGEL.
She made the audience laugh when presenting Charles Baudelaire's Enivrez-Vous (Be Drunk) and astonished them when reciting Um Mitternacht in German, a poem by Friedrich Rückert. With her special sense of humor she told us to “spare us” with more German lyric when announcing Rilke's Just After Sunset (The Panther). Next to those we got interpretation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heigths (High Waving Heather and No Coward Soul Is Mine). For Autumn Winds ANNE CLARK left the stage to the both instrumentalists, whereas MURAT PARLAK now played an accordion and sung – by the way, with a wonderful and intensive voice that made the Shell Song to a goosebumps causing highlight. Wow!

After only one hour the show was already over, much to the regret of all attendees, who - with standing ovations and ongoing applause - tried to get the trio back on stage. With success. The trio came back for an encore playing Heaven and then an exceptionally great, piano- and bass drum driven version of the ANNE CLARK classic, Our Darkness. This was truly stunning! And so a way too short but an exceptional evening came to an end and I discovered some new poems.

Setlist: Journey By Night, The Sitting Room, If/Sleeper In Metropolis, Waiting, High Waving Heather, To Music, Be Drunk, Um Mitternacht, The Hardest Heart, Dedication, Autumn Winds, Shell Song, The Panther, Mundesley Beach, So Quiet Here, If I Could, No Coward Soul, Elegy For A Lost Summer // Heaven, Our Darkness

story & pics © Dajana & Dajana Winkel • Photography