1. Already Whole
2. Woman & I
3. Loneliest Birthday
4. Moon on a string
5. Canvas
6. Blood of the earth
Red between green .7
Something got lost
(along the way) .8
Where do I go from here? .9
The night will pass .10
Song for her.11
It took a long time for me to get here.
For years, I sang songs written centuries ago — stepping into stories shaped by other hands. It was a gift. An honour. And yet somewhere inside, a quiet question kept returning:
Where do I go from here?
Woman & I is that beginning. I began writing quietly. Not as a plan. More as a way of showing up for myself.
Some songs were written in Wels, when I felt the walls closing in. Others came in Vienna, in the midst of endings. And some were born in Amsterdam, where I moved alone with nothing but a gut feeling and a Wurlitzer.
There were days shaped by doubt.
A lens of comparison I could not shake.
Pushing to live up to expectations, dependent on approval and lost in opinions.
Wondering why my life did not look the way it was supposed to look.
But somewhere between folding laundry on a birthday spent alone and watching the moon hang low over unfamiliar streets, something shifted.
On my loneliest birthday,
I was the one holding me.
Loneliness transforms — not into hardness, but into presence. Comparison softens into compassion. The voice that once judged grows quieter.
The songs on Woman & I move through seasons: red between green, moonlight and morning, water and memories, falling leaves and open skies. They speak of time passing, of things lost along the way — and of something deeper that remains.
It’s my life and I’m living it.
Feel my heart, every beat of it.
Musically, the album drifts between jazz, pop and Lied — intimate and spacious, rooted and searching, carried by breath and silence as much as by melody.
A voice turning inward. Not to withdraw, but to stand.
Woman & I is not a reinvention.
It is not a declaration.
It is a return.
Not louder. Just closer.
Lied & Song
Since 2012, Lia Pale and mathias rüegg have been exploring the meeting place of the Great American Songbook and the European Lied tradition. Their journey began with Schubert's Winterreise and has since grown into an ever-evolving body of work encompassing Schumann, Brahms, Händel and most recent Hugo Wolf and original songs.
If the Great American Songbook grew out of songs that wanted to become standards, the European Lied tradition grew out of poems that wanted to become music. Their work brings these two lineages into conversation, revealing that beneath their different histories they speak the same language: melody, poetry, harmony and human experience.
Approaching the Lied as a living art form, they reimagine these works through the openness of jazz while preserving the intimacy and poetic depth of the originals. As Duke Ellington's Prelude to a Kiss gently suggests, they are perhaps "Schubert tunes with a Gershwin touch"—where the lyricism of the Lied meets the freedom of jazz, revealing familiar music in an entirely new light.
Seit 2012 erkunden Lia Pale und mathias rüegg den gemeinsamen Klangraum von Great American Songbook und europäischem Kunstlied. Was mit Schuberts Winterreise begann, ist über die Jahre zu einer kontinuierlichen künstlerischen Reise geworden – über Schumann, Brahms und Händel bis hin zu aktuell Hugo Wolf.
Während das Great American Songbook aus Songs hervorging, die zu Standards wurden, erwuchs das europäische Kunstlied aus Gedichten, die Musik werden wollten. In ihren gemeinsamen Arbeiten treten diese beiden Traditionen in einen lebendigen Dialog und zeigen, dass sie trotz ihrer unterschiedlichen Wurzeln dieselbe Sprache sprechen: die Sprache von Melodie, Poesie, Harmonie und Mensch sein.
Lia Pale und mathias rüegg verstehen das Kunstlied als eine lebendige Kunstform – offen für neue Perspektiven, ohne ihre Wurzeln zu verlieren. Mit der Freiheit des Jazz, Raum für Improvisation und einer zeitgenössischen Klangsprache eröffnen sie neue Zugänge zu vertrauten Werken und bewahren zugleich deren Intimität und poetische Tiefe. Ganz im Sinne von Duke Ellingtons Prelude to a Kiss entstehen so vielleicht tatsächlich »Schubert-Melodien mit einem Gershwin-Touch« – dort, wo sich die lyrische Welt des Liedes mit der Offenheit des Jazz verbindet und Bekanntes in neuem Licht erscheint.
