Silje Nergaard - Leverkusener Jazztage

The phalanx of Norwegian female jazz singers - although please don't take the word "jazz singers" too seriously - is legendary. Their figurehead for many years has been Silje Nergaard.

She is one of the most successful European jazz singers. In 1982, at the age of 16, she performed at the most famous festival in her home country - Molde. Her musicians: Jaco Pastorius' orphaned band. Then Pat Metheny discovered the singer and helped her get her first record deal. Since her debut album "Tell Me Where You're Going", with which she reached number 7 in the Norwegian pop charts in 1990, she has become an integral part of the cross-genre Scandinavian music scene. She is one of the very few jazz protagonists who also enjoy great popularity in the pop world, because she is not afraid of any kind of blinkers.

The Norwegian with the gentle voice is known for her soulful perfectionism and for the fact that she also reflects seriously on life in our world in her songs.

After more than 30 years on stage and over 15 albums released, Silje Nergaard is now presenting another top-class album with her latest album "Houses", full of music and lyrics that touch you, arouse emotions, but are always optimistic.

"Houses" is a concept album about hopes, dreams, love and longing for the future, with which Silje Nergaard musically processes her personal impressions, experiences and thoughts during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. "At a time when the world collapsed and we were all cut off from normal everyday life, I, like most other people, experienced long stagnant days at home. It was a time that was intense and so very different - a surreal situation." Silje Nergaard therefore took long walks in the streets around her home. Everything was so unusually quiet there, a strange atmosphere. She looked in the windows and began to think about the people in the houses with all their different stories and lives, which ultimately inspired Silje Nergaard to write song lyrics. These may often be personally colored, but ultimately the singer looks beyond her own horizon in them, and so her fourteen pieces are a reflection of all our lives over the past months.

"When I realized that life outside was at a standstill, I knew I had to find the magic within myself. Getting into a state of creativity was not only useful, but in my case, necessary. I felt a strong need for expression in this particular time, without interruptions, with the possibility of pursuing long thoughts, composing songs for months... and being in them even when I went for a walk... (in fact, I composed while walking too). As an artist, it was inevitable to express these stories and the resulting atmospheres in my own music."

Changes open people's eyes, but we learn from these situations. Most of us live in countries where we are free to do what we want. Since corona, we have had to learn that there can be restrictions, that freedom can also have limits. But that's because we want to protect ourselves and our fellow human beings. "Being a musician is part of being human... we grow, we change, we evolve, and of course corona has affected us all, in different ways, and some people's stories are hard and have left big wounds. But I think maybe we've all learned something personal about ourselves in the process, we've been forced to look at ourselves and the world from a different perspective for a long time."