Valerie

Biography by Jason Birchmeier Austrian vocalist Valerie emerged as a solo artist in 2007, scoring a couple big hits with "Mädchen" and "Regen," yet her recording career dates back roughly ten years prior, including stints in the short-lived girl group C-Bra and the award-winning downtempo group Saint Privat. Born Valérie Sajdik on April 2, 1978, in Vienna, Austria, she spent her childhood in Moscow, where her father was a diplomat and her mother a journalist. A multilingual speaker of German, French, Russian, and English, she attended a French school in Moscow until age 13 when her family returned to Vienna following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. She later studied abroad in America. In 1998 Valerie was selected to be cast in the girl group C-Bra, with which she scored a few hit singles ("Make Up Your Mind!," "Love You Today," "Papa Chico") and released a full-length album, Mind Your Make Up! (1999). The group separated after releasing its one album, and Valerie focused on the completion of her studies, graduating with a law degree in 2000. In subsequent years, she worked as a jazz singer in the south of France, an experience that inspired her to name her next project Saint Privat. Named after a village near Montpellier in which she lived for a while, the project was a collaboration chiefly with producer Klaus Waldeck; other members of the group include guitarist Clemens Wabra, bassist Ruediger Kostron, and drummer Erwin Schober. Similar in style to better-known European downtempo acts such as Röyksopp, Zero 7,