“from Yellowstone to Yenisey”
Do not look for me,
You know my heart does not beat here,
It lives in the spaces of dreams.
Do not call for me,
You know where I go anyway,
In the estuary territory of the Missouri and Yenisey…
This is how musical border-crosser and cultural-political bridge-builder Tino Eisbrenner writes and sings on his 2020 album INDIGO, and he means it metaphorically. A year later, his Christmas album HEILIGE NACHT (Holy Night) was released, a typically Eisbrenner-esque world-music and poetic contribution to simple peace.
From the beginning, this project did not rely on the usual commercial singing of Christmas carols, but one can feel that Eisbrenner loves the quiet, pacifying power of winter. For him, the time of reflection and coming together goes far beyond the short Christmas season, and so with his WINTERREISE (Winter Journey) concerts, he searches for lyrical images that dwell not only in classics interpreted a thousand times, but above all within himself. Images that he has experienced or dreamed of. Images of the wintry Yellowstone at its confluence with the Missouri, stretching to the Siberian expanses of the Yenisey. That is where Eisbrenner’s holy winter journey stories live, as well as the songs from timeless spaces that he brings to the stage with his band formation EISBRENNER & TATANKA YOTANKA from December to February. In 2026/27, he is completely dispensing with strings and piano.
Guitars, vocals, Native American flutes, a blues harp, bass, and drums form exactly the mystical, magical mood we hope to find every year—a mood that can be found in far more than just one holy night. The dream of the cleansing power of winter and songs that make the holy magic tangible even after the Christmas season has passed.
Once a year
So wonderfully clear
What the idea of humanity was. (TE)
