Jacob Karlzon "Winter Stories", Introduction: Jürgen Becker

The board of the USB Foundation had planned to bring some light from the Friedenskirche in Ratingen to the war zone in Ukraine during this first Sunday of Advent 2025 and organised this charity evening with Swedish pianist JACOB KARLZON and German cabaret artist JÜRGEN BECKER. Our plan worked perfectly, we experienced a great evening and received donations of fantastic 63.760Euro! All that money will be used to replace medical equipment in some of the children's hospitals in Ukraine, which were destroyed by Russia. Transportation into Ukraine will be done and supervised by the Cologne based Blue-Yellow-Cross. Thanks to everyone who made this possible.

Jürgen Becker impressively linked the serious topic of the evening, including his own experiences from participating in aid transports, with fundamental political and social aspects such as freedom and democracy. In his “Becker-typical” manner of expression and gestures he reached the hearts, souls, consciences and laughing muscles of the audience.

Jacob Karlzon fascinated the audience in a completely different way, namely musically. In view of the difficult situation in children's hospitals in Ukraine and impressed by the special atmosphere of the church space, Jacob spontaneously decided that he could better express his feelings and thoughts through free improvisation.

Due to this, we all witnessed a unique, virtuoso piano concert, including passages, that were reminiscent of Keith Jarrett's Cologne concert, but also included tunes based on Swedish folk and christian Christmas carols.

A big thanks to Jürgen Becker and tusen tack till Jacob för denna imponerande, unika konsert den första advent.