This spring Tora Augestad won, together with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Norwegian Grammy for the album “Portraying Passion”.
On her latest release “Dialogues”, Augestad goes all the way down in format and presents a double album where each song is a duet with musicians she has worked with over the last 20 years.
The record describes a special artistry; Augestad is known as a genre juggler and front-runner who takes every musical landscape she moves into seriously. The duo format is intimate and the songs are from Henry Purcell via Schubert, Jan Eggum and Kari Bremnes to newly written songs by Mathias Eick and Trygve Seim have a subdued feel. The double record follows a day and tries to transcend genres. Classic pearls glide seamlessly into evergreens from “The American songbook”, to recent songs by Geirr Tveitt and John Cage. Once again, it’s a unique album from her hand.
The musicians she brings with her are Trygve Seim, Christian Eggen and Svante Henryson, Frode Barth, Frank Hovland (Bergen), Bendix Dethleffsen (from Ibsen Award winner Marthaler's theater productions), Torbjørn Dyrud, Erlend Skomsvoll, Jørn Simen Øverli and the Swiss baroque specialist Martin Zeller. In addition, her own ensemble is Music for a while with Stian Carstensen, Mathias Eick, Trygve Brøske, Pål Hausken and Martin Taxt as co-musicians.
Tora Augestad
Tora Augestad’s versatility inspires composers, theatre directors and conductors. By commissioning new works and through the collaboration with her various ensembles she continuously seeks new challenges and the exchange of artistic ideas. She knows how to be theatrically convincing and how to engage her vocal capabilities, which defy easy classification, in a compelling manner.
Born in Bergen in 1979, the singer/actress Tora Augestad studied classical music and jazz singing in Oslo and Stockholm, devoting herself principally to repertoire of the 20th and 21st centuries. While studying in Berlin and Munich she intensified her involvement in German music before graduating in cabaret sing- ing from the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo.
In 2019 / 2020, Tora Augestad will be in Christoph Marthaler‘s new production Nach den letzten Tagen. Ein Spa¨tabend at the RuhrTriennale and in the role of Mary Lou in Paul Abraham’s operetta Ma¨rchen im Grandhotel giving her debut at the Theater Luzern. Furthermore, she performs Bekannte Ge- fu¨hle. Gemischte Gesichter at the Festival d’Automne Paris and sings Berio‘s Folk Songs with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and Joshua Weilerstein as well as Reinbert de Leeuw's Im wunderscho¨nen Monat Mai with the Oslo Philharmonic for the inauguration of the new Munch Museum Oslo.
The most striking thing about this extraordinary artist is how versatile she is. (...) Tora Augestad transcends conventional labels. (Opernwelt)