Birdy is actually touring on her Beautiful Lies tour through Europe and stopped at Zurich Kongresshaus too. Thanks to Zürcher Kantonalbank and AllBlues concerts I could see her live for the first time. The concert was sure different than I expected.
I’ve never been at Kongresshaus before and was curious about already due to this. At first sight it seemed quite chic. Were we underdressed now? But the audience was totally mixed and there didn’t seem any kind of dresscode. We were lucky so, hehe. It was a very nice hall, where Birdy was playing her concert on this evening. With lights on the ceiling that were shining like a sky full of stars. The concert of course was completley seated. We were sitting on the gallery in the middle. The chairs weren’t the most comfortable and the spotlight on stage kept shining directly into our faces. That was bad luck. Apart from that we saw directly down on stage.
The 22 years old British singer/songwriter from Birmingham, Lawrence Taylor, opened the evening. With his mature, soul voice he sang, accompained by an e-guitare, songs as “Kisses in the dark”, “Waiting for your love” or “Robyn”. You can find some of them on his first, selfproduced debut EP. During his short set he quite reminded of James Bay. And it was so quiet in the room, it was unfamiliar.
Jasmine van den Bogaerde, better known as Birdy, entered stage at 9pm with her 5 members band and sat down behind the piano. She was glittering and sparkling. From my seat I couldn’t really see what exactly she was wearing. Just been sitting too far away. It was some kind of body with a cape or a transparent dress over it. “Beyoncé like” my friend said. I had expected that Birdy would sit behind the piano during her whole concert and playing a rather quite concert with quiet songs. I was wrong there.
The stage was lit up in blue, green or red light. Together with the gentle sounds of the violin and whistle, it felt all very mystical. And this already during the first song. She changed every now and then to the edge of the stage and played the guitar instead. That she’d play loud, powerful synthie popsongs, I never expected. These songs were mainly on her new third album “Beautiful Lies”, I was told.
During the whole set there were sure 5-6 songs played, that I knew just from the radio. It was “Skinny Love”, the Bon Iver cover with she celebrated in 2011 her first hit as a 15 years old. But I also knew “People Help The People”, “Lost It All”, “Wild Horses” or “Wings”. Googling the setlist I even realized, that they were never the same. Definitively a plus factor to her. My favourites “Keep Up Your Head” as well as “Let It All Go” – the duet with Rhodes, that she sang with her support Lawrence Taylor at Kongresshaus, were played as an encore. I was surprised, how she ended her concert quite exactly after 90mins.
Have you been at the concert at Kongresshaus too? Or seen her live before?
Even hours later “Let It All Go” was still stuck in my mind. I fell asleep with and woke up with again. A friend liked the concert a lot, said though, it was almost a bit too perfect. Everything sounded almost as on CD, there was barley a difference. Of course this can be seen as good or bad, isn’t it? Can’t compare as I never listened to her albums so far, but even so it sounded pretty flawless. In the end I thought that many songs were often sounding very simliar and esp. as she’s not so talkactive, the change overs were even more flowing. It was nice to see Birdy live, but it is probably staying an uniqe visit for me.
In case you want to listen to Birdy yourself, you can of course find all the concert dates on her website: www.officialbirdy.com. Infos about support act Lawrence Taylor you can find on Facebook.
