From the liner notes of Sadder Music, I’ll share with you…
Arriving in Berlin with the hopes of musical adventure turned out to feel a little like walking onto the set of an Andy Warhol Holocaust film. The circus-like atmosphere of a town swarming with the bohemian, artistic and intoxicated, coupled with the haunting, terrible weight of what is still recent history, I floated in what seemed a surreal haze, both curious and full of trepidation. With very little knowledge of how to proceed, I endeavored to write ten songs, a collection of impressions of my surroundings as they came to me. Some would be specifically about the city and others would continue on old themes but adopt some of the sounds that played everywhere around me, and I was more than a little curious to see what would come out. I was delighted, too, to get to work on them with some of the fine musicians that I was introduced to.
I managed to write all but one of the ten songs during my initial seven-month stay. ‘Old Synagogue,’, was written afterward, on a visit to Toronto. The one song I wanted to reserve for the topic of my Judaism, so dramatically re-contextualized by the strange kind of pilgrimage that going to Berlin was for me, it proved too hard for me to put into words while I was actually there. This recording is a testament to the magic that can happen between friends and colleagues when a love of song is shared. A live show at the Jaegerklause in Friedrichshain, it’s a warts-and-all recording, true to the happenings of any given night, in any given show. But it is also one that captures one particular shared evening in time and space that I am more than a little grateful for.
The album is dedicated, above all, to all those who were hip to the scene well before I was, and who took me in as one of their own in no time at all. Particularly: Tom Lee who and the folks at Artliners, The Comedian Pharmacists, Two Dollar Bash, Al at East of Eden Bookshop, the guys at the Concierge, Gregg’ and his Cheesecake, Anto, Uta, Suneel, the estrogen contingency of Shreinr 10, Ana, Jojo, Torsten and Wencke, Carsten and Winnie and Axel’s Law, Kevin Proudfoot, Nick Reddel, Sean Moore, Dugald Jayes, and many, many more. Thanks from the bottom of my heart.
Orit Shimoni
Canadian singer-songwriter Orit Shimoni has been writing and performing her own songs for more than twenty years. She created her alter ego “Little Birdie” in Montreal and released her first two albums there: “Cinematic Way” and “I left the city Burning” which landed high on the national album charts there. Orit moved to Berlin where she wrote and recorded her third album “Sadder Music, live in Berlin”. From that moment on she lives from and for touring the world. Since then she released seven more albums. Check them out here ! Read more about Orit in Berlin in this diptych.
More info about Orit Shimoni