Moving boxes are standing around and it will probably stay that way for a while. Evi Keglmaier and Thomas Steierer moved a month ago, but before they can unpack everything, water damage and other small things need to be repaired. Otherwise it is a dream to be here in one of the quietest and greenest corners of Laims, say the two of them. There is only one direct neighbor with whom they have already made friends, as with a few others, from a distance you can often hear someone “playing the piano with virtuosity”, the New Rex is around the corner, “that is a great art house cinema, there are we were right there. ” Right from the start they would have felt more at home here than ever in the five years before in the Westend.
It will take a while before everything is ready in the idyllic Laims. After all, the cabaret artist Thomas Steierer is currently writing his new, second solo program, and the one that was once through Twisted thread Well-known musician Evi Keglmaier, the job is slowly picking up speed again. With the project already published on CD before Corona Keglmaier, a laconic-poetic duo with the drummer Greulix Tisch, it starts again, for example they have just accompanied the “euward8” finissage and award ceremony in the Haus der Kunst with music. And also the Wedding chapel, in which she plays with Alex Haas, Mathias Götz and the brothers Markus and Micha Acher according to the band’s self-description “Rumpeljazz at its finest”, has already been on tour in Japan and won the German Film Prize for the soundtrack to “Wackersdorf”, is slowly getting back to business.
He had noticed it for a long time
Keglmaier and Steierer had their first meeting in 2009, at the regular poets’ table at Fraunhofer. “That’s when we spoke for the first time,” remembers Steierer, “but then Evi went out to smoke and I stayed inside as a non-smoker.” Three years later, back at Fraunhofer, things went better. Keglmaier made a guest appearance at Hasemann’s daughters, and Steierer was there because he had recently done an interview with Julia Loibl. After the performance, we started talking again, this time more sustainably. “I still remembered him,” says Keglmaier, “he was an intern of my twirling partner Maria Hafner, so I had seen him a couple of times.” He had noticed it for a long time.
So now they made an appointment, and the rest, as the saying goes, is history. The 39-year-old man of the word, who was not on the stage himself at the time, but after studying politics, philosophy and, respect, theology, as a freelance journalist (from BR and AZ to the homeless newspaper bite) and copywriter was out and about, and the exponent of the new folk music scene, trained in school music studies (she grew up on the violin, now mainly plays the viola and tuba) grew and moved together. The acid test, as they say, were the lockdowns. “That’s when we noticed that it also works when we sit together for an unusually long time.”
They got married in May 2020 on Mandlstrasse. “It was the first day on which the beer gardens were allowed to reopen,” remembers Steierer. “Despite Corona, we deliberately set the appointment this way and didn’t postpone it. It was then very funny. Five people were allowed into the hall, two witnesses and Josef Brustmann as a musician, who was actually limited to 25 people, waited outside We then had our champagne reception without any problems, while the police pelted everyone 500 meters away. ” And Keglmaier adds: “Josef was more of our spiritual advisor than the registrar. He made it incredibly charming and, so to speak, easily pushed us into marriage.” The number of family members was somewhat unevenly distributed. Born in Munich, Styria, he only has a small family – “I was an only child like my parents” – while Keglmaier, who comes from Landshut, has a much larger family. There are four siblings alone, “my oldest sister is already a grandmother.” Suddenly having so many followers really likes Steierer, especially since Landshut connects the two: Steierer also has family roots there and likes the city.
Your groups of friends have now merged
A common, connecting basis from which each enriches the other – this applies to many areas of your partnership. In particular, of course, for their cultural interests. “Thanks to Thomas I always know which interesting new books you have to read. And which indie bands are good. I come from classical music and never knew my way around,” says Keglmaier. “Of course, it opened up completely different, direct access to music for me,” replies Steierer. “And some of my current favorite bands like The stutter I would probably never have discovered it without her. “They both have a penchant for irony and black, tragicomic humor. Which is why they both found access to cabaret at an early age.” My parents already loved cabaret, “says Keglmaier or to Bavarian-diatonic yodelling madness went. And the legend goes that my mother, who was pregnant with my eldest sister, burst her amniotic sac when she laughed at the New Year’s Eve program of the laughing and shooting society with Dieter Hildebrandt. She was usually very calm with a tendency towards melancholy. “” I can’t keep up with that, “replies Steierer,” I started with Polt, then since ‘India’ I was also a big fan of Josef Hader. “
Your groups of friends have now merged. “It has always been important to me anyway that it not only consists of colleagues with whom it can be broken, but also people with whom I have nothing to do professionally,” says Keglmaier. Nevertheless, the two private and specific professional work are kept separate. “Of course we visit each other’s performances when we can and give each other feedback. And we show each other what we’re working on. But specifically, everyone does their own thing. When I write lyrics, I listen to Thomas like them thinks. But in the end I’ll do what I want. ” Steierer is in a sense in his bubble because he processes everything for his programs that he has collected for decades and “already written for the drawer”. “For me it takes decades to implement it,” he jokes. It is not excluded that they can get something done together. “Some say anyway that there is overlap in terms of content in what we do,” says Steierer. “Not only did I last with the Greulix cupboard Keglmaier but also set some radio plays to music, which was great fun. I could also imagine something like that with Thomas, “adds Keglmaier.
Above all, Steierer will not have time for this anytime soon. He only wants to establish himself in the cabaret scene, in which he had a sensational entry as a late starter. In December 2017 he won the Passau executioner’s ax, probably the most prestigious young talent award in the republic, without having previously performed a single full-length appearance. The bookings that came in after that were more of an orientation and experimentation phase. “It then became very professional,” he says. The stage name Metromadrid is also likely to fall victim to this development. Probably already with the second program on which he is currently working hard. It will be called “Always further” and “more of a theater piece than ablach entertainment”, as Steierer explains. If Corona allows, the premiere will be in autumn. If nothing extraordinary happens, Evi Keglmaier will be there too.