Koester Quits X-Why-Z

Thomas Koester has left his post as a director of German promoter X-Why-Z Konzertagentur and gone back to working for Karsten Jahnke.

The move across Hamburg comes two years after Koester went in the opposite direction, leaving Jahnke’s office to set up X-Why-Z with Christian Bilda and Sasha Verdillo from FKP Scorpio, another major German promoter in the city.

Although there was no formal announcement that Koester had split from the company other than his name not appearing on the bottom of the July edition of X-Why-Z’s tour schedules, he said it was an amicable parting of ways.

"In the two years I spent helping to run the company and dealing with things like tax, national insurance and other administrative matters, I found that it left less time for looking after the bands and booking the tours," he explained.

Bilda says he understands Koester’s situation and accepts that some people aren’t happy dealing with "withholding tax and the paperwork from the German authorities" on top of booking bands and arranging tours.

"When I was at Scorpio there were 50 people and I didn’t know half of them," Bilda said. "We’ve all had to take on more of the administrative work because we’re a smaller company and we don’t have so many staff.

"I’m happy with that because I prefer to be in that sort of company, while others are happier if they have a back office staff that takes care of all those things," he said.

The name acts Koerster has taken back to Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion include Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, Paolo Nutini, Amy Macdonald and Paul Weller, although future tours are likely to be a cooperation between the two companies.

X-Why-Z is coming to the end of a quiet summer period, largely because the company wanted to avoid competing with the European soccer championships, and Bilda is expecting a busy autumn.

August dates include shows with Anti-Flag, The Futureheads, Dropkick Murphys, Michael Franti & Spearhead, White Lies and Zoot Woman.