Lucy van Kuhl: "Skillfully Wrapped"

We live in a time when the packaging often seems more important than the content: Every simple chocolate bar is turned into an exclusive taste event through advertising, the janitor receives the exclusive title of Facility Manager instead of a pay raise, and love no longer hops into our lives like it used to with Cupid's random arrow, but is now tailored and algorithm-based through Tinder and Parship. The German Heinz Günter suddenly wraps himself in a striped shirt and beret while on vacation in France and wonders why, despite carrying a baguette under both arms, he is not seen as Jean Pierre... Packaging is not everything. Lucy van Kuhl skillfully wraps her insights in her fifth program: Absurd observations are enveloped in gentle piano sounds, tiny peripheral observations are magnified with a large poetic magnifying glass, and the dreariness of a nursing home suddenly transforms into an exhilarating over-80s party through a cloak of imagination. Delicate melancholy meets raucous nonsense, classical piano meets boogie-woogie, and if you think such things cannot harmonize – Lucy's overflowing imagination is a strong, bright gift ribbon that effortlessly holds it all together and is very cleverly packaged. Lucy van Kuhl's work "Skillfully Packaged" is a mix of political social criticism that is both biting and humorous, along with profound, melancholic songs. The critique is wrapped in the lyrics, which are often humorous and vivid, and in the moderation between the songs, such as in a critique of the "debt brake" or of prejudices against various groups. Nenad Uskoković, a musical jack-of-all-trades, accompanies Lucy on the cello.