Whereas most festivals tend to avoid cities and occupy rural landscapes for a few days in summer, Bluebird has found its home in the very center of Vienna. The festival celebrates the art of songwriting and brings some of the best artists and bands of this guild to the stage. Since 2005, Bluebird has taken place annually on a weekend in late November at the Jazz club Porgy & Bess, which doesn’t see any pop acts performing for the rest of the year. Thus, the atmosphere is quite special, with some parts of the audience seated in front of the stage and on the balcony; the acoustics are amazingly clear regardless where you sit. The festival is run by the Vienna Songwriting Association (VSA), which has committed itself to the promotion and support of songwriting. VSA was founded in 2004 and hosted its first concert evening – a tribute to Nick Drake – at the end of November 2004. The Bluebird festival now celebrates this “birth” of the VSA annually, although there are countless other concerts set up by the VSA taking place in Vienna all year, in venues like Gasthaus Vorstadt or Haus der Musik. The selection of artists ranges from young Austrian talents to international Indie-favourites such as Okkervil River and SoKo, who headlined the sold-out Bluebird Festival in 2008. 2009 included singer/songwriter Howe Gelb, Laura Gibson or William Fitzsimmons.

Recent Session(s) at this location

• Bored Man Overboard „The end is near now“, David sings, leaned against the centuries-old walls of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It’s not an apocalyptical line at this monumental place, but a very personal story about regret and the moments before a breakup. One by one his bandmates join in, adding layer by layer, violin, guitar, drums, trumpet; until finally everything stops except the finger-picked guitar it all started with. The song is called “Wine” and serves as e... more ... December 15th, 2009 - (4 Comments)

• Laura Gibson It lulls you tenderly and cosily, while a melancholic-musing undercurrent bears you away. Laura Gibson, folk singer and songwriter, performs “Hands in Pockets” and “Postures Bent” accompanied by her mates Sean Ogilvie and Micah Rabwin (both from Musée Mécanique) in a small bookshop in Vienna’s city centre. Darkness has fallen in and a candle has been lit when the three from the Portland-area charmingly embed their songs in this intimacy. Laura... more ... December 9th, 2009 - (1 Comments)

• Gustav Critical, political, remonstrative content under the cloak of kittenish, charmful, captivating vocals and arrangements: Eva Jantschitsch aka Gustav is laying it on thick on her poetic-idealistic musical universe without forgetting about its simultaneous deconstruction through subtle irony. Her ingeniously and innocently performed, rose-coloured negation-attitude creates a wide space of allusive ambiguity and surprising images. Next to some exp... more ... April 12th, 2009 - (2 Comments)

• The Miserable Rich The Miserable Rich sit at the bar of a Jazz club in Vienna, joking around and interpreting lines from a Take That song. During the soundcheck just a few minutes ago some feedback problems occurred, but now all worries are resolved. The faces of the four band members are softly lit from the back when Will Calderbank tenderly starts to draw his bow across the strings of his cello and The Miserable Rich head into their song “Button My Lip&#... more ... January 12th, 2009 - (3 Comments)

• Soko We pick up French singer and actress SoKo at the Funkhaus where she has been interviewed for the national radio station fm4. Her booking agent recommends us that we shall better not ask SoKo to play her early chart-success “I’ll kill her” for us as she ran out of the studio, when she has been asked to do so at the radio station. Her explanation: She was never really satisfied with that song and it simply has nothing to do with her ... more ... November 24th, 2008 - (6 Comments)

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