Sarah Maria Sun’s “Killer Instincts” is a gloriously creative and colourful collection of songs about bad people doing bad things. It is also a concept album – a pleasurable journey in bad people’s shoes.

To find just the right lyrics, Sarah brought together songs from a wide range of genres – from classical art song, opera, Broadway, movie soundtracks, to classic rock and pop.

How can this mix work? In these songs, Sarah inhabits a wide range of characters, at the same displaying her amazing abilities in disparate styles.

The arrangements, by Max Renne and Sarah, are as clever as the repertoire. Bernstein’s virtuoso “Glitter and Be Gay” reimagined for an ensemble of banjos and guitar, and his “There’s a Law About Men” sung to an electronic background of the orchestral accompaniment chopped and minced with filters.

Joe Walsh’s rock classic “Life’s Been Good” is accompanied by just bass guitar. Tom Waits’s “Just the Right Bullets” in a wild west meets surf music arrangement. Others are sung basically straight: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins “I Put a Spell on You”, the Schubert melodrama Abschied von der Erde and the first recording of Stefan Wolpe’s harrowing Hitler.

Keep an open mind and enjoy the ride!

Packaged in a deluxe Digipak with a 32-page book including all of the song texts in English and German.

Soprano Sarah Maria Sun is known as one of the foremost performers in the contemporary music scene. In addition to numerous songs, operas and oratorios, her repertoire currently includes more than 900 compositions from the 20th and 21st centuries, including more than 320 world premieres. Her tremendous adaptability is demonstrated on the music-theatre stage and leading opera houses in Europe and shows her skill for haunting theatrical and musical interpretation time and again in the depiction of complex female figures. She was nominated by Opernwelt in 2017 as singer of the year for her role as Elsa in Sciarrino's monodrama Lohengrin. From 2007-2014, she was the first soprano of the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, an ensemble of seven singers that has been one of the world’s leading pioneers of contemporary vocal music for thirty years.

- Jan Philip Schulze (piano, organ)

- Hubert Steiner (electric, acoustic & Hawaiian guitars, banjo, bass guitar)

- Bernd Oezsevim (drums, percussion)

- Axel Nitz (baritone saxophone)

- Max Renne (piano)