Sören Sieg

The non-fiction book '"Ich bin eine Dame, Sie Arschloch!", which Sören Sieg co-authored with Axel Krohn and which was published by Ullstein Verlag in early 2013, spent a total of 12 weeks on the paperback-bestseller list of the Spiegel Online.

Most of the compositions, lyrics and arrangements are by Sieg; he has written a total of 11 programmes with over 200 pieces for LaLeLu. In the meantime, 5 Songbooks with mostly works by Sieg have been published to accompany the LaLeLu programmes and pieces. In June 2012, he retired from the a cappella group after a total of about 2000 concerts; however, he continues to write and arrange for LaLeLu.

The 2012 book Come In and Burn Out, written by Sieg together with LaLeLu co-founder Jan Melzer, was reviewed in detail by Michael Lehmann-Pape in his online portal Buch und Hörbuch Rezensionen - Rezensionsdienst (www.rezensions-seite.de). Lehmann-Pape assessed the Denglisch für Anfänger book as an amusing, humorous and not entirely serious journey through current language developments or linguistic aberrations and as thoroughly entertaining reading pleasure Sieg's book Superdaddy, also published in 2012, was reviewed among others by the Sankt Michaelsbund [de]; Its reviewer Helmer Passon pointed out that the "secret of Sören Sieg's writing" was not "caricature-like exaggeration" but, on the contrary, the "precise observation and elaboration of the comical aspects of everyday life and the unerring punchline", and recommended the book as an "exciting entertainment novel with depth", which maintains its "comedic, but equally substantive level" throughout.

In addition, Sieg wrote various satirical texts, among others for the Berlin cabaret Die Distel [de], as well as occasional contributions for the taz, which, for example, included an interview he conducted with the British author Tom Hodgkinson (among others Anleitung zum Müßiggang, Rogner und Bernhard Verlag, Berlin 2005) in a special edition of the taz in April 2012 and published excerpts in the regular print edition.

Sieg also worked as a satirist, columnist and author. In his first, as yet unpublished novel Das Milchstraßenpalais, which he wrote while studying at the Hamburg Musikhochschule, he processed impressions from his music studies. Excerpts from his second and third unpublished novels appeared in the Hamburger Jahrbuch für Literatur (Hamburger Ziegel and later Ziegel) in the 2000/2001 and 2008/2009 editions. From 2009 to 2013, Sieg regularly wrote a front page column for the Sunday edition of the Bremen Weser-Kurier, the Kurier am Sonntag, in which he reported on his "chaotic everyday family life" under the collective title Schönen Sonntag. The approximately 200 stories were well received by readers, and a collection of selected columns was published in book form in 2010 and 2012 respectively. He also published a partial autobiographical novel with similar subject matter, as well as, together with various co-authors, two books, each with satirical-literary Stoff, which came out in 2011 and 2013. Some of Sieg's books have also been published as e-books and audiobooks; he has also been invited to numerous author readings in the meantime.

In addition to his work for LaLeLu, Sieg composed numerous musical and choral pieces in which he combined among others African music with European recorders. His African suites have been published since 1996 by Peter Tonger and Moeck. In addition, he wrote several commissioned compositions, such as for the Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Quartet, the recorder festival Utrecht and the Ensemble Pipelife.

Sieg then switched to studying music and studied piano, composition and percussion at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg from 1991 to 1996. There, he met fellow students Jan Melzer, Tobias Hanf and Stefanie Hoffmann, with whom he founded the a cappella quartet "LaLeLu" in 1994. The four-member a cappella comedy group, in which Sieg was a tenor singer as well as the "head of the group" at their performances, soon became known nationwide and had numerous performances in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. LaLeLu gave around 130 concerts a year, won numerous prizes, had several TV and radio appearances and published several CDs.

He came to music at an early age, learned to play sheet music at pre-school age and later several musical instruments, such as the recorder, violin, guitar, saxophone, trumpet and drums. Sieg also began writing at an early age, wrote his "first novel" about a family's trip to the moon at the age of six, and later wrote for the Rote Elsa, the student newspaper of the Elsa Brändström School after his Abitur- from 1984 to 1986 for the Die tageszeitung. In 1983 he won second prize in the Hamburg Steinway Music Competition. In 1985, Sieg met the Dutch composer and pianist Ronald Poelman at the Werkstatt für Jazz, Rock und Neue Musik (Workshop for Jazz, Rock and New Music) in Hamburg, who encouraged him to compose and with whom he played as a duo (Poelman: piano, Sieg: saxophone) and gave concerts for two years. Sieg wrote numerous pieces for this instrumentation. In 1986, together with some like-minded people, he founded the Desertöre, who together performed the Conscription Totalverweigerung [de], thus also the Wehrersatzdienst [de]. From 1986 to 1991, he first studied politics, sociology, history and philosophy at the universities in Hamburg and Bielefeld. He financed his studies as a piano accompanist and toured throughout Germany with Monty Arnold [de], Annette Mayer, Lilli Walzer, Joe Luga [de] and many others.

Sören Sieg (born 1 November 1966) is a German tenor, songwriter, composer, arranger, satirist, columnist and writer. He is a co-founder of the a cappella group LaLeLu [de], in which he sang as a tenor and hosted the performances from 1994 to 2012. From 2009 to 2013, he regularly wrote a front page column for the Bremer Newspaper. In the meantime, he works mainly as a freelance writer and composer.

Born in Elmshorn, Sieg is a son of the teacher, writer and satirist Wolfgang Sieg [de] (1936-2015) and also comes from a family of musicians. His mother Elisabeth Sieg, who later worked as a psychological psychotherapist, taught recorder at the Staatliche Jugendmusikschule Hamburg; his grandfather Heinrich Paff conducted a chamber orchestra. He grew up together with his older siblings Katrin (now a theatre scholar at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.) and Sönke (now musical director on a cruise ship of the Hamburg shipping company TUI Cruises) in Elmshorn. Sieg learned languages at an early age, started school at the age of five, skipped a grade as a highly gifted child and graduated from Elmshorn High School as a 17-year-old in 1984 in the Elsa Brändström school where he passed his Abitur.