HILDEGARD LERNT FLIEGEN "THE FUNDAMENTAL RHYTHM OF UNPOLISHED BRAINS"

Founded in 2005 by singer and composer Andreas Schaerer, this Swiss sextet has already grown a beard and started to stay out late. Schaerer’s compositions slip through any easy attempts at categorization as easily as a trout squirms free of a fisherman’s hands. The group was finally brought ashore in 2007, when they released their first album for the Swiss label Unit Records. The reviews were glowing, sales were brisk, and the album had to be re-released after being sold out in a couple of months. Since then, the band has traveled thousands of kilometers on the Autobahn, drank many a liter of gas station coffee, and played more solos and refrains than they care to remember — on tours in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and Slovenia. They’ve tickled the fancies of audiences and expert juries alike. In May 2008 the group won the ZKB Jazz Prize. The long and storied list of stages where Hildegard Lernt Fliegen has performed include many a jazz club and cabaret, but also festivals such as Jazznojazz Zürich, Cully Jazz, BeJazz Winterfestival, Offside Festival Geldern, Suisse Jazz Diagonales, Langnauer Jazz Nights, Dresdner Jazztage, and the Stanser Musiktage.November 2009 was no time for putting their feet up and relaxing by the fire. Au contraire, Hildegard had a date with destiny and was beaver-busy preparing their second album — Vom fernen Klang der Sache — appeared as a CD/picture-book designer by the Zurich-based illustrator Peter Baeder. Hildegard made her music video debut with the song “Seldom was Covered with Snow and an Old Oak,” in a charmingly surrealist staging directed by Maria Sigrist.Hildegard Lernt Fliegen made Russia their home in the fall of 2010. The group toured for two weeks through a landscape which seemed to have been painted just for them. Two stowaways on board — the filmmaker Michelle Brun and sound editor Martin Ruch — recorded the highlights of this Swiss-Soviet summit before locking themselves for a few months in an editing studio… Meanwhile, Hildegard continued touring, returning to Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. The following fall the band returned to their ursine hometown (Bern) to release the CD Live in Moscow and their concert tour film Tales Wander. HILDEGARD LERNT FLIEGEN