Luise Weidehaas

In the organizer's words:

Luise Weidehaas - the song poet (DFL Kultur)

"I choose words that I like for situations that move me, describe landscapes, remember encounters and harmonize everything melodically," says Weidehaas in line with the guiding principle Melody is king. Born in Meissen, surrounded by her parents' record cabinet - Cat Stevens, Stevie Wonder, Pink Floyd. Her grandmother was a piano teacher and sang opera. She studied philosophy and German language and literature in Düsseldorf before starting her doctoral thesis on political song in the GDR. Long before Luise Weidehaas picked up the guitar, she sang in the school and university choir and various band projects. She borrowed her stage name Weidehaas from her mother, whose maiden name it is. Inspired by longer stays in Canada and England, she released her EP Swell on her own in 2015. This was followed in spring 2020 by her debut album Shore under her own label Point Reyes, which was voted "one of the best German-language song albums of the year" (2020) in the Deutschlandfunk Kultur program Tonart. Her voice is said to have an "English lightness" (Westzeit) and her phrasing a "Celtic origin" (WDR 4). Her musical sources of inspiration include Sigur Rós, Sufjan Stevens, Kat Frankie and Bon Iver. She has been compared to Suzanne Vega (Folker) and Sandy Danny (WDR 4) and described as "a kind of mini Joni Mitchell in German" (SR 2 KulturRadio). Weidehaas sang the title track for the WDR radio play series Leopoldpark (2018) and Greul (2022).