Meret Becker en concert, Meret & The Tiny Teeth - Le Grand Ordinaire

Variety - Chanson and western song

"Le Grand Ordinaire" is a collage of musical images and surreal songs that tell of travelers. The longing to run away together, departure, escape - inside and out, never arriving, fear of the foreign & fear of being foreign... The recurring theme is a circus that makes its way like a vague memory. "The magician does the tricks, the audience does the magic," says Meret. What at first sounds like a cheesy statement is a fact. The magician manipulates objects and exploits human perceptual weaknesses. For the audience, however, things can float in space, disappear, reappear and much more. The spectator is the actual magician. Meret wants to make use of this ability and, together with her band "The Tiny Teeth", brings musical images to the stage, comparable to a soundtrack to an inner movie. On the one hand, it consists of miniatures that sound like music from a music box or a snow globe. The romantic and bizarre instruments of musical clowns are used here: music box, children's piano, glass harp and singing saw. They tell of the sailors among the stage people, who speak all the languages, often at the same time, and who hold onto the cliffs with all their might, standing upright, with tangled hair. And the tent creaks and groans like a sinking ship, but not a single rat gets off the ship, because it smells - no - stinks of adventure.

Meret Becker (a Berliner from a family of artists with German, Danish and Polish-Yiddish roots) writes concept albums. She enters her own worlds, which revolve around shifts in reality, transience, the love of human flaws and insatiable longings. Over the years, she has created her own sound cosmos, which clearly shows that her musical career once began in Berlin's vaudeville and cabarets.

"When the circus has been in town, there's a huge, sad, bright spot in the lawn. With a little sawdust in it. And a sad young man is left behind, weeping bitterly for the contortionist he is so in love with and who has moved on. And the contortionist, for her part, sits on the train and weeps bitterly for the young man she is so in love with. And the tears run down her cheeks and she looks out of the window and the rain is pattering on the windows and the telegraph poles are whizzing by. And she imagines what messages have flowed through the cables: Love messages. And on the cables sit little swallows, like notes on the staves of love songs. And soon the huge telegraph poles turn into the masts of huge sailing ships that sail away on the endless sea.... And he said, you are beautiful, and he said, you are strong. And she said, I love you, always have. Then she wrapped herself around his little finger and they didn't speak for a long time." (Excerpt from the program "Le Grand Ordinaire" // Text: Meret Becker)

Cast:
Meret Becker - vocals, saw, homophones
Ben Jeger - glass harp, piano, accordion
Buddy Sacher - guitar, banjo, mandolin
Marie-Claire Schlameus - cello
plus special guest performance (TBC)

Artist homepage: www.handshake-booking.com/de/artist/meret-becker