North Sea Jazz 2011 part I: Jonathan Jeremiah, Kris Berry and Paul Simon

Due to the fact I arrived back home early this morning (8 o'clock) I'm still a bit tired while typing this review. It has been an exhausting night, but oh what a night it was. I knew the atmosphere at North Sea was amazing, since I found it out last year, but I didn't know a concert could be so mind blowing. I'm talking about Janelle Monae. But I'll tell you more about that later, let's begin at the beginning.

Ramai and I arrived at 4 o'clock at Ahoy, which meant we had to wait for another hour until the complex was going to open. Finally it did, and we went in with lots and lots of other people. We bought our tickets a few months earlier, it was a tough decision, but we decided to go on Friday. And we bought an extra ticket for Prince of course because when you have that chance you've gotta take it. Not everyone was so privileged because it was sold out in short time and you had to pay extra money of course.

Anyway, after a quick walk around the complex (I had to examine all the records of course, but unfortunately they were very expensive: 50 euros for Marvin Gaye's 'What's going on'.) we went to the 'Maas', the biggest stage in Ahoy.

Jonathan Jeremiah, of whom I hadn't heard until that same morning, was performing there. The Metropole Orchestra was joining him on stage. Raymann (you might know him from 'Raymann is laat' introduced the British singer-songwriter who gave a good show. He looked a bit like Jesus (in a good way) and his voice was incredible. A darkbrown voice (the man is white) and he had a soul/folk sound. I especially loved 'How half-heartedly we behaved' and the uptown duet with Frisian singer Elske Dewall 'Heart of Stone'. After an hour we left because we had to be on time at the next concert and to be honest, the last songs were a bit the same.


Next stop: Kris Berry. Their singer is from Curacao and also calls herself Kris Berry (Kristel is her real name). Their style is quite vintage, fifties and they have a sound with influences of New Orleans Jazz, Caribean, country and rhytym and blues. We saw them as the supporting programme at Selah Sue in Eindhoven. I was already a fan after that short concert so I was dying to hear them performing at North Sea. At first, Kris Berry (the singer) was very nervous, you could tell by the look on her face and the way she was talking to the audience.

But the songs made everything good, her voice is wonderful, I'm sure you have never heard such a voice. Especially 'Flower Empty Tree' and 'Love Trip' were amazing. Her family was in the audience, so she was very fond about that. Ramai and I also follow her on Twitter (and she follows me!) this sounds really bad, because I actually never really care about how many people follow me, etc. but I'm telling this, because I was almost sure she recognized us! After the concert we got her autograph.

We rushed to Paul Simon, who was performing at the 'Nile'. We were late, so stood somewhere in the middle and I couldn't photograph him very well. I was a bit disappointed by his performance because most songs I heard in that half hour were a bit dull and slow. The only great song was '50 ways to leave your lover'.

And again we had to go away earlier because we wanted to see Janelle Monae, the main reason why we chose to go on Friday. More about her in part II.