Welcome to the website of singer Nora Fischer. Nora is currently taking a little break from the stage and exploring new directions, so this website is snoozing for a while. If you need some sounds to keep you company, feel free to visit the discography page, which includes a new release of a live performance!
Discography
Solo albums
Ayre
Composed by the amazing Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov, Ayre is a breath-taking ode to various styles of folk music ranging from Sephardic tunes to Eastern European music and Christian Arab traditions. It is both a celebration of worldwide sound colours, and an attempt at building bridges between painfully separated and opposed cultures. Ayre was recorded live at TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, in collaboration with the wonderful Asko|Schönberg Ensemble.
Ayre is a digital-only release and not available on CD. Click on the links below to listen to the album.
HUSH
Nora’s debut album HUSH was released on Deutsche Grammophon in April 2018, and has toured the Netherlands in 2018/19 and worldwide in 2019/20. The album won an EDISON award in October 2018!
Working alongside celebrated guitarist Marnix Dorrestein, one of Nora’s long awaited dreams finally became reality: the redefinition of early music songs. 17th Century composers such as Monteverdi, Purcell and Dowland have provided songs with an incredible beauty that are extremely close to the pop music of today, only with a performance practice that is usually far away from the ears of this generation. With this project, Nora & Marnix place these songs in our time. Stripped of mannerisms, sung in a lower key and performed in the purest version: simple, timeless and intensely beautiful. Sometimes groovy and soulful, sometimes silent and soul piercing. Approached with the creativity of songwriters in the 21st century.
Click here for some videos of the HUSH album release in Paradiso Amsterdam.
Watch the trailer here.
Download the booklet for more information on the album.
“This is the most remarkable disc of the year (…) with HUSH, nothing is usual…the result swings back and forth between uplifting and touching – always fresh and playful and above all, extremely musical.”
(Het Parool)
“A restrained electric guitar and a phenomenally beautiful female voice; on Hush, those two ingredients turn out to be enough to show how beautiful these songs are.”
(Luister Music Magazine)
FOLK
Especially for the 2018 record store campaign of Deutsche Grammophon NL, Nora recorded the mini-album FOLK. This disc is all about the meeting point of ever-inspiring folk music and the multi-layered vocabulary of classical music. Composers such as Ravel and Bartók have been inspired by various folk music traditions, and have combined them with their own vocabulary as ingenious composers. The combination of these simple, pure and beautiful melodies, with many added layers of compositional qualities, amounts to wonderful new crossroads of two worlds that appeared to be so far from one another. When these two worlds meet, it is a playground of possibilities for vocal expression, giving way to the playful, the vulnerable, the intensely intimate or ecstatic joy.
FOLK was released as a record store campaign and is not for sale. It was released digitally on 25 January 2019.
Please click on the booklet for more information on the music, and click on the links below to hear the album online.
Collaborations
The Secret Diary of Nora Plain
Together with composer Morris Kliphuis (Kapok Jazz Trio, Kytopia), text writer Lucky Fonz III, the Ragazze String Quartet and drummer Remco Menting (Kapok), Nora has created a new genre-defying project. The Secret Diary of Nora Plain – darting between the borders of pop, jazz and classical – tells the story of the young Nora Plain, trying to live as an individual in the increasingly monitored society of today. Through her diary entrances, we hear her struggles with the watching eyes all around her that try to penetrate her personal space more and more.
The Secret Diary of Nora Plain is an intimate, personal and unsettling song cycle about the relationship between society, privacy, and paranoia. Created by writers and performers from classical, jazz, pop & folk backgrounds, defying all musical boundaries.
Composition: Morris Kliphuis (Kapok Jazz Trio, Kyteman Orchestra)
Lyrics: Lucky Fonz III
Performed by: Nora Fischer, Ragazze String Quartet, Remco Menting (Kapok Jazz Trio)
For the single Rat In My Room: click here
Iván Fischer: Composer’s Portrait
Nora’s musical career usually doesn’t mix with her father’s (conductor Iván Fischer). But as he started composing his own works, their musical worlds crossed paths and Nora started singing his compositions. It grew into a very special collaboration, and resulted in Iván Fischer’s first composition CD. The style is eclectic: a result of many different musical inspirations finding their way into a collage-like composition style.
“(…) In these excellent performances soprano Nora Fischer is a revelation, both versatile and virtuosic, meshing beautifully with the instrumentalists (…)”
(BBC Music Magazine)
“(…) Fischer’s daughter Nora is a focused, fluid soprano soloist in the latter and in some tiny Spinoza settings, and is haunting in the Yiddish mourning song A Nay Kleyd.”
(The Guardian)
“Nora is phenomenal in her fathers cantata. She is a vocal artist, singer and actress in one.”
Luister awarded a 10 out of 10 to the CD!
(Luister Music Magazine)
Song Reader by Beck
Initiated by saxophone player Ties Mellema, Nora has featured in a project based on the work of rock musician Beck Hansen. Beck released an album called Song Reader consisting only of sheet music instead of his own recordings, inviting people to interpret the music in their very own way. Ties and Nora have taken the challenge to create whole new versions of Beck’s songs. Thanks to the craftmanship of brilliant composers such as Ian Wilson, Morris Kliphuis, Konrad Koselleck, Rob Horsting, Tini Thomsen and Maarten Ornstein, the variety is huge and the result is a bizarre mix of styles and sounds…
The live album was released in September 2014. Click on the links below to listen to the songs.