FR 25 AUGUST 2007 - ZARASAI / LITHUANIA
ALLERSEELEN
http://www.mjr.lt/

http://www.myspace.com/allerseelen

These are some lines of the diary of Gerhard Petak about the first Allerseelen performance in Lithuania in October 2004:

ALLERSEELEN
KERNAVE
LITHUANIA
28.VIII.2004

MENU0 JUODARAGIS 2004

28.VIII.2004

My musicians and I travelled by car a whole night to Lithuania, it was a peaceful travel through Slovakia and Eastern Poland. We were looking forward to our first concert in Lithuania which was for us a terra incognita. The moon was almost full, it almost had the colour of copper. It remained for hours close to the horizon: The festival Menuo Juodaragis would take place at full moon. 

Early in the morning we arrived at the Lithuanian border. It was raining a bit, and this was my first impression of Lithuania - a very moist country full of lakes and hills and mushrooms. I saw some beautiful horses, chestnut-brown, close to apple trees. We arrived in Kernave, a small village in the North West of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. For the first time we saw the green artificial hills close to the river Neris which were once used for fortifications. These hills reminded me of similar hills and tumuli in the north of Lower Austria. Signs showed us the way - long road lead for miles into the wood. We came to a large meadow. There were wooden houses, tents, various stages, and one of these was really large as more than thousand people were expected.

Labas Vakaras / Good Evening: Allerseelen performed at midnight. On stage were the two percussionists Balazs and Gergoe who are also members of the Hungarian group Cawatana and the singer Gerhard - this time Allerseelen performed for various reasons without bassist. The air was now cooler and the clouds that had been over Kernave for the whole evening finally disappeared. The stars became visible, the full moon was shining directly into our eyes. The sky with its lunar light and the dark clouds reminded me of the symbolistic paintings by Mikolajus Ciurlionis, a Lithuanian painter - I had read about him when preparing a bit for this journey. The audience was great, the sound system and the light show were wonderful, the combination of music and light created a very poetic and quite psychoactive field of force. My drummers and I had been tired from the long travel - and instead of relaxing in the small farm where we had our room I had spent the whole day around the hills and in the small archaeological museum of Kernave - but now we were again full of energy and enthusiasm. The light had the colour of amber, we were surrounded by golden sparks - the light fit perfect with the songs and their lyrics although the light engineer did not speak German at all. Especially one moment was unbelievable, I never noticed an experience like this before and also after this in a concert - impressive and immense purple waves were rolling from the audience into the direction of the stage - and this created the impression that hundreds of people were coming closer and closer and closer and closer to the stage: Aciu / Thank You.

Gerhard Petak
28.VIII.2004 + 10.VII.2007