Sometimes there must be a God.
Two and a half years ago Peter Kuthan and I started to create the concept of Parade. We wanted to break with the traditional concepts of parades as military displays and to replace this with the idea of filling public space with musical movement, although we kept to the idea of parades as joyful celebrations.
We chose different types of soundworlds which we felt would work together in public space and which had the capability of movement.
But it all depended on the weather. When I arrived in Linz after an exhausting journey from Zimbabwe it was cold, wet and windy. This was no weather for encouraging people to come out of their homes to join us. But on 1st May the sun broke through and from the moment the zumari and the alpine horns started in solarCity we had glorious sunshine.
For three days people followed us around solarCity, then the harbour and finally up the Pöstlingberg. It was more than I could have dreamed of. As the wonderful recordings directed by Klaus Hollinetz show, there were moments of quiet and others were musicians met, collided and passed each other. There were smiles on people’s faces; they were with the musicians, surrounded by them, unseparated from them. As one person said to me towards the end: “It may only be May, but this has to be one of the best events of Linz09.”
At the end of it all there was a big party up the mountain … and the next day it rained. It was cold and it was wet and windy. But I didn’t care; we had had three glorious days of warmth and music. Sometimes there must be a God although it is a pity that Linz09’s Musical Director Peter Androsch couldn’t joins us: his two year old son gave him chicken pox so we had to leave him indoors imaging the great experience he had made possible and which he missed at the last moment.

Keith Goddard, 7th May 09