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TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 2007           LOCAL NEWS            GENERAL-ANZEIGER (BONN)

Three hours of zest, passion and devotion
CONCERT Jazz vocalist Faith Gibson wows nearly 200 listeners at Kultur im Hof in Rheinbach.Hans-Günther Adam accompanies the Heimerzheim resident with sensitivity and in perfect harmony

Harmonize superbly: Faith Gibson and Hans-Günther Adam at the concert at Himmeroder Hof. PHOTO: VOLKER LANNERT

By Birgit Rossmöller

RHEINBACH. “The night is young, the skies are clear...” The warm, lush voice of jazz vocalist Faith Gibson put a spell on almost 200 listeners at Himmeroder Hof. The line from “It’s De-Lovely” by one of America’s greatest songwriters was the perfect heading for the concert “Faith Gibson Swings Cole Porter”. In the early evening, people met in Rheinbach to chat, dine and hear good music. In spite of a hefty shower beforehand, they filled the courtyard under a colorful rainbow in the clear sky until there was standing room only. They expressed their gratitude with huge applause for her fervent performance, characterized by zest, passion and devotion, of “I’ve Got You under My Skin” until the encore of “Love for Sale” about three hours later.

With sensitivity and in perfect harmony, Hans-Günther Adam accompanied the graceful redhead with the bluesy timbre as if he could foresee her every thought. “It’s as if he reads my mind,” Gibson said later. The musician, who plays in the best-known jazz clubs and piano bars and with well-known jazz bands all over Germany, also conveyed his joy of swing and jazz here in Rheinbach. And he did it although the concert is a part of the Kultur im Hof series, and the volunteer organizer Erich Marschall can only pay the artists who appear here a small sum of money to cover their expenses. The rest is paid for by sponsors.

Faith Gibson single-handedly draws friends of jazz from the region like a magnet. Some, like Birgit Formanski, even had to slog through the rain to get here. From Swisttal-Heimerzheim, Gibson is also known in the region as a singer in the women’s trio “Lipstick.” Since 2003, the American-born singer has also appeared as a soloist, for instance at the Harmonie in Bonn. The bandwidth of her skill, from a touching “Night and Day” to the bold and flippant “Let’s Do It” has already been praised by accomplished artists. The Dutch trumpeter Ack van Rooyen, who played, for example, in the Bert Kaempfert Band, once asked her: “What are you doing here? You should be at Carnegie Hall.”