Cabaret Star Adrienne Haan Talks Philharmonie Premiere, the Arts in Times of COVID-19

Chronicle.lu recently had the opportunity to interview Luxembourg-born concert and cabaret star Adrienne Haan ahead of her debut performance at Philharmonie Luxembourg later this month.

Adrienne Haan, a citizen of both Germany and Luxembourg and permanent resident of the United States, will premiere her show "Till The End of Time" at Philharmonie Luxembourg on Wednesday 16 June 2021.

"Till The End of Time", first performed in New York ten years ago, is a tribute to the Great American Songbook, perpetuating the legacy of the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Adrienne Haan will now perform her award-winning jazz and swing soirée (Bistro Award for Best Live Entertainment in New York), for the first time at Philharmonie Luxembourg, as part of a jazz series focusing on Luxembourg artists at the Kirchberg concert hall.

On this occasion, Adrienne Haan will be accompanied by her long-time pianist (with whom she has worked for fifteen years) and multiple jazz prize winner Benjamin Schaefer, who is also a theatrical pianist - an attribute which Ms Haan deems essential for a "fun and positive" show like "Till The End of Time". An all-round entertaining evening awaits, with Ms Haan telling her story and that of the different composers in between songs (including both classics and lesser known works).

"Till The End of Time" certainly differs in tone from the cabaret star's previous two concerts in Luxembourg: "Tehorah", a commemorative concert (attended by His Royal Highness the Grand Duke) performed at Théâtre d’Esch last year on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, and "Between Fire & Ice", which she performed at the Théâtre National du Luxembourg in 2019 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Weimar Republic. She described "Till The End of Time" as "a little lighter", offering some "summer fun".

In addition to her Philharmonie premiere, Adrienne Haan will be performing her show "Cabaret Français" for the first time at the Festival de Wiltz, on 25 July 2021. This show, dedicated to French chansons, also premiered at New York, where the artist has resided since 1997, a few years after "Till The End of Time". 

Despite her successful off-Broadway career, Adrienne Haan admitted that she had struggled to break into her country of birth's music scene. For fifteen years, there were very few opportunities for her in Luxembourg, and she had tried for four years to make it onto the stage of Philharmonie Luxembourg. She lamented that "Luxembourg has so much local talent but focuses on big international artists". That seems to be changing now.

In addition to her upcoming two shows in Luxembourg, Adrienne Haan will be performing several concerts in Germany this summer. Last month, she performed four sold-out shows (her first live performances since lockdown) in New York, where entertainment venues are "almost back to full capacity" and "people [are] desperate to get back to theatres". Whilst April and May are normally her busiest months in New York, Broadway remains closed until September and smaller venues are often unable to afford putting on shows at lower capacity. Ms Haan managed to put her shows on (some of the only ones in the Big Apple at that time) at a privately owned theatre, with each show at 70% capacity.

For her Philharmonie premiere, there will be two concerts held on the same evening (one at 18:00 and another at 20:00) due to limited capacity in the context of COVID-19 restrictions.

Discussing the impact of the pandemic and related lockdowns on her career and the arts in general, Adrienne Haan lamented that the crisis hit when she was at the peak of her career. "Everything stopped", she said, describing the experience as "chaotic", especially in Germany; Luxembourg at least had shows in winter, in line with various safety measures. She said she could not forgive any government for how they have treated the arts throughout the pandemic, adding that it these unprecedented times "changed her" and really brought into perspective just how "fragile" the industry is.

As a completely self-managed artist, "the more you work, the crazier it gets", she explained. With the pandemic, however, Adrienne Haan was forced to take a well-deserved break from years of travelling and moving around. Even if she would have preferred to continue working as before, "the break was quite nice at times". Whilst lockdown resulted in lots of postponements and depression, a lot of opportunities also arose because of the COVID-19 crisis, and she was "humbled and grateful that [she] can work now": Similarly, although the sector has lost a huge amount of money due to the pandemic, Ms Haan noted that she had received some state aid in the end, which went towards her two CD projects and a film noir video production of "Tehorah", which she had originally planned to perform live. 

Tickets for the Philharmonie premiere of "Till The End of Time" cost €25 (€15 for under-27s). Tickets for the show at 18:00 are available here; tickets for the show at 20:00 are available here.