Georg friedrich handel provides this evening's theme song. "Hallelujah" tont it in coburg's youth center "domino" from the speakers. Then simon and jan enter the stage – admittedly without drums and trumpets, but instead with two guitars.
"Hallelujah!" the musical cabaret duo has christened its current program – a choice of title that fits the style of their songs perfectly. The tendency toward sentimental melodies only serves as camouflage and is repeatedly and ruthlessly counteracted by cynical texts that like to pretend they want to sing about the idyll, only to expose it all the more surely in the next moment.
Exposing the gentle semblance
They sing about the eyes of this world, about the gentle appearance, which of course can never be trusted. They sing about nazis and their dull slogans. They sing – with a touch of self-knowledge – about the strange things that some people do in their search for themselves.
Whimsical mixtures
Sometimes they sound as if a sound tufter with a sense for bizarre mixtures had tried to cross herbert gronemeyer's tearful tone with rainald grebe's comic despair. Then again, with the help of live recorded sound loops, they demonstrated how colorful it is to make music with two guitars.
Virtuoso guitarists
Because simon and jan, guests in coburg in the "quatsch&" series co at the domino", are not least an outstanding harmonizing guitarist-duo, which masters the art of the fine nuances apparently completely effortlessly. And in between they intersperse virtuoso solo passages.
Deceptive idyll
Above all, however, they have a virtuoso command of the game of disenchanted expectations. Whenever their songs sound particularly harmonious, particularly idyllic, almost pretentiously kitschy, the unmasking punch line is never long in coming.
Homage to leonard cohen
That with a program under the motto "hallelujah" as an addition to the "deceased heroes and idols" section finally also leonard cohen with his "hallelujah" the end of the event is not too surprising and still not the final end.
Stages of a career
Simon and jan the songwriter duo met in 2001 while studying school music in oldenburg. Simon eickhoff and jan traphan have been performing together since 2006. They have already received a number of awards for their programs. In the last few years they have won the hanns-seidel-foundation's young talent award for "songs on a summer's evening", the challenge award of the german cabaret award and the music award of the bavarian cabaret award.