Magne live at Kulturkirken Jakob, 4 December

Magne performed an exclusive White Xmas Lies concert with his band at Kulturkirken Jakob in Oslo this afternoon. The 1-hour concert, which was Magne’s first proper solo concert since 2008, sounded really good and was attended by an appreciative audience of specially invited Salvation Army and a-ha.com guests.

When the doors opened, the audience were greeted with warm soup and bread inside the church, handed out by Magne himself and others.

Magne, who switched between piano, acoustic guitar and electric guitar, was joined by an 8-piece band on stage; Karl Oluf Wennerberg, Even Ormestad, Morten Qvenild, Tini Flaat Mykland, Madeleine Ossum, Emilie Heldal Lidsheim, Ingvild Nesdal Sandnes and Dan Sunhordvik. On the last song they were also joined by a horn section from the Salvation Army.

Ten of the songs were taken from White Xmas Lies, but in addition Tini performed “You Can’t Have it Both Ways” – written by Magne for her 2014 album Undo My Heart (which was given out for free after the show).

Here is the setlist:

1. Snow is Falling
2. The Light We Lost
3. A Wintry Silence
4. The Season to be Melancholy
5. Caprice Des Dieux
6. This is Now America
7. You Can’t Have it Both Ways (Tini)
8. So Cold It’s Hard to Think
9. White Xmas Lies
10. Revelation Song
11. There Goes Another Year

See a short video clip from the show posted by Magne’s label Drabant Music on Facebook.

The whole concert was filmed by a multi-camera production and may end up as a TV-special soon. And even if this was the only concert this year, Magne is planning more concerts for next year.

As a warm-up for today’s concert, Magne performed “There Goes Another Year” at the lighting of this year’s Christmas tree at the University Square in Oslo on Sunday, 1 December. A couple of video clips can be seen here and here. He was also a guest on NRK P1’s Nitimen on the same day, which is available at nrk.no (starts at 28:30).

Update: It seems Magne also did a second concert at Kulturkirken Jakob tonight, but this time it was more of a closed, corporate gig.