Andrea Bignasca in Zurich

After I had seen Andrea Bignasca last summer in Aarau, alone with guitare, thanks to ZKB I could go to see his concert at Moods in Zurich. It was a good concert, but in the end it didn’t really sweep me away.

2 week earlier I’ve alredy been at Moods for Brandy Butler’s album release. The concert of Andrea Bignasca was again well visited and even on this Friday evening the audience was very mixed. Differently to the summer, when I’ve seen him by chance at “Musig i de Altstadt” in Aarau, he played with full band that night – with a keyboard player, bass player and a drummer. He played the guitar and a base drum.

The concert was divided in two sets, what can become a mood killer. What of course isn’t necessarily a crucial factor, whether the concert is good or not, or whether I like it. The born Ticinese was immediately trying to conect with the audience. It’s not that you wouldn’t understand him. He was born and grown up in Ticino, but he’s speaking Swiss German well. And besides, a big part of the audience was italian speaking, as he found out with a short survey.

During the two sets he played most songs of his album “Gone” as well as some covers. A very likable guy with a good humour and esp. a great voice. Still it seemd to take a while til the connection to the audience was there. Some visitors were kept disturbing the show with their talking. Only towards the end of the first set people seemed to finally wake up, finally be present at the concert and didn’t want to let him go for the break. So he played another two songs on his own, without band, before he sent everyone off into a break.

I didn’t really get into the second part. Yes, maybe it was the fault of the break. But the second part also was more bluesy and rocky. The bigger part of the audience seemed to like this a lot though. Loudely they esp. sang along during “Roll out Mama”. Andrea was laughing then, that he didn’t know either what “Roll out Mama” meant, but it sounded good. And before the concert ended, the band rocked with a medley, what I liked.

Well, there’s sure a difference when someone’s playing solo or with full band. In the end I didn’t really get electrified by the concert. Something was missing. I’d rather go see him solo again.

Infos about Andrea Bignasca you can find on bignascaandrea.com