Tag: Night of the Prog

Alex Henry Foster, who attracted attention in Europe especially in 2022, is a Canadian singer and co-founder of the band Your Favorite Enemies, with whom he released four albums. The death of his father in 2016 marked a break in Foster’s life and he left the band.

Windows In The Sky, his first solo album, was released in 2018 and went straight into the Canadian Top 5. The album was made with the help of his old bandmates. Two years later, it was released worldwide, followed by the live album Standing Under Bright Lights in 2021, which was recorded for a CD/DVD release at a Montreal music festival.

For Foster, music has always been a refuge, a gateway to other worlds. His father’s Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath albums and his mother’s old rock’n’roll singles provided escape from the realities of growing up poor in Montreal. “That town does not treat poor people well,” he says. “I come from a difficult background, very blue collar. Music kept us together as a family. It was the most beautiful gift I could have received. My parents had nothing, and, in music, they gave me everything.”

His music unfolds a hypnotic effect, especially live – the tracks are sometimes improvised and extended to more than 20 minutes by the very well-rehearsed band. It seems as if there is a blind understanding among the band members, as if they are all very good friends with each other and as if they have already experienced a lot together. The audience is also integrated again and again and taken along by the charismatic frontman Foster. The tracks themselves often start quietly and increase into large, sometimes wall-of-sound thunderstorms of sound. Foster lets the listener share in his pain and despair and seems to process his past over and over again, almost like self-therapy. He grabs the audience with it because probably everyone has had to go through loss and grief in their own way. With this, Foster finds the connection and connects his audience to each other….
The intonation of Foster’s chanting sometimes reminds one of Anne Clark‘s great deeds of the 80s …

In Europe, Foster most recently performed as the opening act for the band The Pineapple Thief and impressed the audience there.

Foster was part of the line-up for the 2023 festival, but had to cancel his participation due to health issues. We are looking forward to finally seeing him and his band perform in 2024!

Alex Henry Foster and his band will perform on the Loreley on Friday, 19 July 2024.

Tickets for the Night Of The Prog Festival 2024 are available in our WiV Ticket Shop!

Alex Henry Foster Links:
Official website
YouTube Channel
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

For the Night Of The Prog Warm-Up Party on 13 July at the Weinstübchen in St. Goarshausen we had already announced Diggin’ Gabriel a few weeks ago, now we can also confirm the second band.

Melanie Mau & Martin Schnella with Simon Schröder

Matters of the Heart in Unplugged Style

The story begins with the song Miracles Out Of Nowhere by the band Kansas. The two musicians Melanie Mau (vocals) and Martin Schnella (guitar, vocals) discovered their common passion for music and this song was an occasion to deepen it even more. Melanie and Martin play music in an acoustic outfit. Primarily they dedicate themselves to cover songs, which they rearrange in their own style. Since both are also talented composers, they are constantly working on their own songs as well. Their music comes from the heart, because every song is a real affair of the heart. In December 2015, the two released their first CD Gray Matters. They perform live in different line-ups as a duo, trio, quartet or even a quintet. The band includes Simon Schröder (percussion), Lars Lehmann (bass) and Mathias Ruck (vocals).

This was followed by The Oblivion Tales, the first CD release with exclusively original compositions. Stylistically, the songs are in the realm of folk rock with progressive influences. Two more cover albums, Pieces To Remember (2018) and Through The Decades (2020) received positive responses worldwide. In 2019, singer Mathias Ruck from Rostock joined the band, bringing complex harmony vocals to the fore.

The music of Melanie Mau & Martin Schnella is timeless, tells stories and fits on stages of all kinds. From the living room in the culture cellar to concerts for music lovers and festivals.

Melanie and Martin say about their own songs:

“The Oblivion Tales are the untold, passed down and true stories that move our hearts. Together we wrote these very special songs. Some of them remind us of precious people who have enriched our lives and are a part of them. Our home is the Harz Mountains and its mystical fables from long ago inspired us to write four pieces of music.”

Tickets cost 30 EUR. For those who bought an Early Bird ticket at WiV, the ticket price is 25 EUR.
Reservations can be made directly via Email to WiV (info@wiventertainment.de). The reserved tickets will then be available at the box office and will also be paid for there.

There is also a Facebook event page.

More Links about Melanie Mau & Martin Schnella
Website
Facebook
Instagram
Bandcamp
YouTube

Listen to Das Goldene Königreich / The Virgin Queen:

The Night Of The Prog Festival is also affected

Alex Henry Foster has cancelled all planned concerts for 2023 due to ongoing health issues. Foster had to undergo a complicated surgery and has also reported about it on his Facebook page. Foster hoped to make a full recovery during spring and be able to do the summer festival shows. Unfortunately, this hope was not fulfilled.

Foster says: “It’s with profound sadness that I have to announce that, due to my still too fragile health condition and my specialists’ persistent disapproval, I had to take the dreadful decision to not only cancel my presence with the Long Shadows at festivals this summer — and along with it the joyful expectation I had of meeting you once again — but also to cancel the massive autumn European tour I was supposed to announce next week. I don’t need to tell you that it came out as a massive reality check for me, but even more so for my bandmates, crew members, numerous collaborators (…) who all had dedicatedly worked so hard to organize and set everything up for me to be back on the road in the coming months. The sole idea of having to make that cancellation/rescheduling call bore terrible sensations and left me emotionally stranded for quite a while. Letting people down is the worst of all feelings for me, especially as everyone has been so earnestly supportive and faithfully benevolent toward me. But regardless of my heartrending feelings, it’s nonetheless the best and most sensible decision I could make for the sake of my recovery at this point. Again, I want to thank you all for your kindness and understanding. It might be a much longer and more challenging journey than I initially expected and hoped for, but being uplifted by your indefectible support feeds the determination I need to envision and welcome every day as the precious gift it is for me to be alive and renewed.”

Alex Henry Foster was due to perform on Friday 14 July. We are of course also saddened by this development, but also we (of course) understand this decision and wish Alex a full and speedy recovery.

We will check whether Alex Henry Foster is an option again for the festival in 2024 and see if we can welcome him then with his fantastic band on the Loreley. However, a decision on this will be made in autumn at the earliest.

We have been busy recently and have filled the now vacant slot in the 2023 line-up, and a corresponding announcement will be made later this week.

This year’s Night Of The Prog Festival will take place from 14-16 July 2023 at the Loreley open-air amphitheatre near Sankt Goarshausen. Information about the line-up can be found here and tickets are available at this link.

Photo: Alex Henry Foster / Facebook-Page