Hildegard Lernt Fliegen embarks on a three-city South African tour
Andreas Schaerer’s Hildegard Lernt Fliegen will embark on a three-city South African tour, interspersed with numerous collaborations with local musicians at the Standard Bank Jazz Festival in Grahamstown, and in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Hildegard Lernt Fliegen is an ambitious and daring sextet that features some of Europe’s top jazz musicians. The group formed in 2005 under the leadership of Andreas Schaerer, the Swiss vocalist who can deploy a range of sounds from steam punk lyrics to mimics of other instruments to a repertoire of unusual sound effects.
Hildegard’s sound is often superficially anarchic but the arrangements, sliding from interlocking rhythms to free jazz and back again, call for total control and discipline. The band is committed to responding to Schaerer’s demands with full immersion, whether performing straight-ahead swing or traversing into a Stravinsky-visits-vaudeville passage of fearsome complexity. Hildegard Lernt Fliegen is on a quest for musical ingenuity and walks a continuous tightrope between jazzy exuberance and quirky humour.
The sextet is made up of Andreas Schaerer [vocals], Andreas Tschopp [trombone], Matthias Wenger [soprano/alto saxophone, flute], Benedikt Reising [baritone /alto saxophone, bass clarinet], Marco Müller [bass], Christoph Steiner [drums], and
Christoph King-Utzinger [sound engineer, bass].
At the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, the band collaborates with an impressive cross-section of South Africa’s top jazz musicians, in various combinations: see the Collaborations section below for more detail.
COLLABORATIONS
Standard Bank Jazz & Blues Café
Date: Thursday 28 June
Time: 22:30
Featuring: Matthias Wenger, Andreas Tschopp, Afrika Mkhize, Shane Cooper, Sphelelo Mazibuko
Sydney Mavundla – Luhambo at DSG Hall
Date: Friday 29 June
Time 12:00
Featuring: Sydney Mavundla, Sisonke Xonti, Andreas Tschopp, Afrika Mkhize, Ariel Zamonsky, Peter Auret
Standard Bank Jazz & Blues Café
Date: Friday 29 June
Time: 22:30
Featuring: Benedikt Reising, Gordon Vernick, Bokani Dyer, Marco Müller, Marlon Witbooi
Standard Bank Jazz & Blues Café
Date: Saturday 30 June
Time: 22:30
Featuring: Mthunzi Mvubu, Benedikt Reising, Sydney Mavundla, Afrika Mkhize, Romy Brauteseth, Peter Auret
Andile Yenana: Umnqgonqgo wabantu at DSG Hall
Date: Sunday 1 July
Time: 12:00
Featuring: Andile Yenana, Linda Sikhakhane , Marcus Wyatt , Kyle du Preez , Christoph King-Utzinger, Michi Stulz
All band members will participate in giving workshops and teaching at the Standard Bank National Youth Jazz Festival from 28 June to 1 July.
