The evening doesn’t start where you would expect – but in the middle of the hall. Michael Patrick Kelly sings his way through the audience in Berlin’s Uber Arena to the stage. A large ball shines at its target. An orange-red solar eclipse slowly opening. Kelly’s silhouette stands out darkly in front of it, moving before the view has even sorted itself out.
It’s a prelude that fits what follows shortly after. “This will be a very human evening,” are Kelly’s first words to the audience. A “safe space” “where we can just leave the hustle and bustle outside”. The rhythm is set.
The Irish-American singer-songwriter is currently on a major arena tour with “Traces,” which will take him through cities like Hamburg, Munich and Berlin before hitting the open-air stages in the summer. Musically, Kelly moves between pop, rock and folk with his sixth studio album, carried by experienced stories. Songs like “Run Free” are about letting go, “Healing” is about allowing pain, “The Day My Daddy Died” is about loss. The album not only provides the name of the tour, but also its theme: “Traces” revolves around the question of what traces people leave behind – in their own lives and in the lives of others. A thought that has been with Kelly for a long time.
In summer Kelly comes to the big open air stages
The Uber Arena is full, but not loud. Many concertgoers initially sit, listen and take their time. It’s a friendly, attentive crowd rather than a euphoric one. Nobody shouts, nobody pushes themselves to the foreground. The energy is created slowly, but evenly.
Meanwhile, on stage, the space visually opens up into a vast landscape. Warm colors, something desert-like, isolated trees. Kelly initially stands in a long black jacket, her hair a little blown away. The 48-year-old’s voice is precise, persistent and strikingly clear for a hall of this size.
Musically, the evening spans Kelly’s idea of traces: large-scale pop songs that fill the room and repeatedly reduced moments in which only voice and guitar remain. New songs fit naturally between older pieces without creating a break. It’s less about depicting different phases of his career than connecting these traces with each other.
“Best Bad Friend” brings dynamism into the hall – and Rae Garvey with it. The two of them change the mood noticeably. People stand up, clap, move. It shouldn’t be the only guest that evening. A special moment occurs when Kelly brings a participant from the last season of the Sat.1 show “The Voice Kids” onto the stage. With braided pigtails and a cuddly toy, an astonishingly confident nine-year-old stands in front of thousands of people and sings Yvonne Catterfeld’s “Für Dich”.
In between things always get casual. In one moment Kelly grabs a camera, films into the audience, reacts to signs held up by fans, spontaneously brings people on stage, talks to them, takes up shouts. “I find the distance between fan and ‘star’ very strange. Even when I’m on a stage, I want a real encounter with the audience at eye level,” says Kelly later in an interview with Rolling Stone. It’s these little scenes that show that he seeks contact with the thousands of people in the room and finds it. “Live music can create unity across all identity boundaries, and is unique in that,” Kelly said.
From world-famous street musician to seeker of meaning in the monastery
One of the longer passages begins with a story. “Imagine you’re 20,” he says. Rich, successful, everything is there. “The whole world revolves around me, I am an egoist,” he quotes. There is laughter in the audience, and one concert-goer comments: “It’s been a damn long time.” Kelly continues. From the point where none of that was enough anymore. Of the emptiness in the midst of abundance.
It is an image that was not chosen by chance. As part of the Kelly family, he finds himself exposed to an extreme form of publicity at an early age. At the age of 15, he wrote his first global hit for his family, who had been making a living from street music for years. A little later he stands in front of an audience of millions. Closeness and distance, small beginnings and big stages.
He goes on to talk about a trip that changed his perspective. Calcutta, encounters, a change of perspective. “For me, what is extremely healing and valuable is the connection with people who show you the bare and raw life. For me, the greatest teachers of gratitude and contentment were people who live with physical disabilities or in extreme poverty. Those who have the least can often give the most,” Kelly tells ROLLING STONE. At 26, Kelly turned her back on the public, entered a French monastery and decided to live a life of silence. “You stop focusing on yourself,” he says. After several years, he finds his way back to music – with more mature songs and a solo career that is gaining momentum again.
Kelly speaks on stage about family, about what remains. “Many people come into your life, but only a few really leave a mark.” He talks about his father, who died early, about fear, about reconciliation. “Forgiveness frees you from resentment and anger.”
“I want us all to set an example in the concert”
Towards the end the mood changes again. It’s the emotional climax of Kelly’s journey. He has been committed to peace and aid projects for years, and since 2024 he has also been the United Nations SDG Ambassador for “Peace and Justice”. A bell is brought onto the stage: the “Peace Bell”, a project that Kelly himself initiated – cast from old war weapons. “I think it would be great if we made a statement in the middle of this concert,” he says and asks for a minute of silence. In the audience, pieces of paper that say “peace” in different languages are held up, illuminated by cell phone lights.
After almost three hours, the evening gradually comes to an end. Kelly thanks the crew, the audience, and the people who accompanied him. Meanwhile, the light slowly changes, becoming brighter and warmer. The sun rises behind Kelly.
The lights come on. What remains is an evening that is defined by encounters, by parable-like stories and by the traces that people leave behind. Just like Michael Patrick Kelly had promised. What mark does he ultimately want to leave on other people? “The beautiful thing about music is that you don’t really have control over what it does to people. I think the momentum of music is fantastic. It keeps me endlessly grateful and in awe that people make my music the soundtrack of their lives,” says Kelly.
