2010
BREL - Songs of Life, Love and Death - Cabaret
Adelaide Festival Centre's Cabaret Festival presents a night of French Cabaret with John Waters, who will perform a concert that highlights the songs of the great French Chanson singer-songwriter Jacques Brel.
Waters has been inspired by Brel’s songbook since he was in his teens, leading him to perform these incredible songs in late night shows in Sydney’s Kings Cross in the early 1970s. This eventually evolved into the critically acclaimed tribute show Cafe Brel in 1999.
Now in this brand new incarnation, simply titled BREL, Waters will create and assume the character again, telling stories rich in dimensions that will arouse and entice you into the world and music of Jacques Brel.
Waters will perform them as the original French versions, explaining their significance along the way sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes painfully romantic but always engrossing and compelling.
'As a teenager hitchhiking in France I meet a street musician singing a beautiful song. I asked who's song it was and he said Jacques Brel and that memory and the passion expressed in the song is something I've wanted to revisit ever since. I also had the fortunate pleasure of seeing BREL live in performance at the Olympia in Paris and I perform his works as often as I can' says John.
If you saw Waters’ popular John Lennon tribute Looking through a Glass Onion and loved it, then BREL is sure to cast a spell and get under your skin.