Bio:
Nora Fischer is challenging the way we listen to the voice. The Amsterdam-based singer is renowned for her adventurous approach to live performance and her creative projects fusing classical and contemporary repertoire. This can range from traditional concert programmes to genre-defying collaborations – such as her award-winning debut album HUSH, which was released on Deutsche Grammophon in April 2018, and her work with Yo-Yo Ma’s legendary Silkroad.
Using her voice as a versatile instrument, Nora’s repertoire ranges from Monteverdi to the many compositions that have been written for her in the present day. Her “affinity with experimental classical styles and sharp dramatic instincts” (New York Times) have led to many collaborations with leading contemporary composers, including Osvaldo Golijov, David Lang & Louis Andriessen. During the 2017/18 season, Nora signed with Universal Music and was nominated by the Concertgebouw to perform in major concert halls across Europe for the ECHO Rising Stars Tour.
Nora’s unique approach has taken her around the globe, from the Philharmonie de Paris and Walt Disney Concert Hall to the Lowlands Pop Festival or a mysterious forest at the Oerol Theatre Festival. She has premiered many new operas, most recently working with the Dutch National Opera and Pierre Audi for the world premiere of Andriessen’s Theatre of the World. Other contemporary collaborations include performances with the Kronos Quartet, Asko|Schönberg Ensemble and l’Arpeggiata.
Nora Fischer is challenging the way we listen to the voice. The Amsterdam- based singer is renowned for her adventurous approach to live performance and her creative projects fusing classical and contemporary repertoire. This can range from traditional concert programmes to genre-defying collaborations – such as her award-winning debut album HUSH, which was released on Deutsche Grammophon in April 2018, and her work with Yo-Yo Ma’s legendary Silkroad.
Using her voice as a versatile instrument, Nora’s repertoire ranges from Monteverdi to the many compositions that have been written for her in the present day. Her “affinity with experimental classical styles and sharp dramatic instincts” (New York Times) have led to many collaborations with leading contemporary composers, including Osvaldo Golijov, David Lang & Louis Andriessen. During the 2017/18 season, Nora signed with Universal Music and was nominated by the Concertgebouw to perform in major concert halls across Europe for the ECHO Rising Stars Tour.
Nora’s unique approach has taken her around the globe, from the Philharmonie de Paris and Walt Disney Concert Hall to the Lowlands Pop Festival or a mysterious forest at the Oerol Theatre Festival. She has premiered many new operas, most recently working with the Dutch National Opera and Pierre Audi for the world premiere of Andriessen’s Theatre of the World. Other contemporary collaborations include performances with the Kronos Quartet, Asko|Schönberg Ensemble and l’Arpeggiata.
In upcoming seasons, Nora has projects at venues including the Barbican, Lincoln Center, Concertgebouw and Berlin Festival, and has been invited on three tours with the Silkroad Ensemble, including her Australasian debut. In 2019, Nora also performs the world premiere of a new Andriessen commission with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, BBC Symphony Orchestra, and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic.
Nora regularly performs solo concerts and devises projects involving baroque, classical and contemporary vocal repertoire, ranging from traditional concert programmes to genre-defying collaborations. She also frequently partners with a number of theatre companies in order to explore the intersection between new music and theatre.
Born into a family with a rich musical tradition, Fischer trained at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and Complete Vocal Institute in Copenhagen, and holds a Masters in New Audiences and Innovative Practice from the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. She also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Musicology and Philosophy, completed at the University of Amsterdam in 2009.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
Intermusica Artist Management
Sana Khan • general manager [email protected]
+44 20 7608 9923
9 Kingsway
London
WC2B 6XF
United Kingdom
For press inquiries, photos & interviews in the Netherlands:
UNIVERSAL MUSIC BV • Paul Popma [email protected]
+31(0)88 626 15 90
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).