The Wise Guys were a German a cappella band that was formed in 1990 in Cologne, Germany and split in 2017.
Apart from Nils Olfert and Björn Sterzenbach, the members all attended the Hildegard-von-Bingen-Gymnasium in Cologne from 1981 to 1990. With their schoolmates Clemens Tewinkel and Christoph Tettinger, who also founded a brass band with them, they formed a rock band. At a school event, the band performed a single a cappella song.
After graduating from high school with their A-levels (Abitur) in 1990, the group focussed on the a cappella genre. They soon named themselves the "Wise Guys". Eddi (Edzard) joined an 18-month alternative service for conscientious objectors in Brussels, which left the group as a quartet. The remaining four joined the Ersten Kölner Barbershop Choir. In early 1994, the group placed third in a Barbershop Quartet competition. However, this type of music was not representative of their later work.
In April 1995, Ferenc Husta joined the group as the bass voice, replacing Christoph Tettinger, who could no longer sing for professional reasons. Christoph Tettinger instead became the group's manager.
After their first album Dut-Dut-Duah! (1994), which was mostly in English along with some cover songs, the band concentrated on German language, rhythm-based compositions. In 1997, the Wise Guys turned professional, and released their third album Alles im grünen Bereich, produced by Uwe Baltrusch. Their following album was with EMI. With their Live-Album (2000), the band moved to Pavement Records.
The usual tours were supplemented by big events such as "Tanzbrunnen", "Totalnacht", and "Spezialnacht", festivals taking place in Cologne. In 2001 they got a world record for the concert on "Tanzbrunnen" (a big area for concerts in Cologne) with 12,500 spectators. Their open-air concerts at the "evangelischer Kirchentag" in 2005, 2007 and 2009 (Protestant church congress) were visited by 35,000, 70,000, and 65,000 viewers respectively.
In 2012, the band released an album in two parts entitled "Zwei Welten". It consisted of an a capella album released in May 2012 and an instrumental album released in September 2012. "Zwei Welten" was also released as a two-disc package with two bonus tracks in December 2012, which brought them to their fifth gold record.[1]
At the end of March 2012, Ferenc Husta decided to leave the group.[2] Andrea Figallo took his place in December 2012.[3] In February 2016, the band published an official statement on their web site announcing that bass singer and producer Andrea Figallo would leave the band in April 2016, and that the group would stop performing altogether in summer 2017.[4] Björn Sterzenbach replaced Andrea Figallo in May 2016.
(Numbers in brackets indicate highest position achieved on the German Music Hits List.)
