Los Angeles Philharmonic / Esa-Pekka Salonen / Nora Fischer LOUIS ANDRIESSEN The Only One

 

THE ONLY ONE

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.

Nora Fischer 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.

REINIER BAAS Reinier Baas vs. Princess Discombobulatrix

‘Discombobulatrix’ is a mostly instrumental, partly improvised surrealist opera in three acts, masterfully illustrated by Amsterdam based comic artist Typex. The story revolves around ‘Princess Discombobulatrix’, a highly confusing figure, ‘The Duke of Waalwijk’ and ‘The General’, who attempt to woo the Princess desperately, and a shapeshifter called ‘The Enormous Wizard Zendor’. It’s not long before the events turn into a tragedy, in which all the characters die a bizarre and violent death. Soprano Nora Fischer plays the role of ‘Princess Discombobulatrix’ (sporadically), while the rest of the line-up is comprised of the creme de la creme of the Dutch jazz scene, with among others Joris Roelofs, Ben van Gelder and Martijn Vink. The musicians are pushed to their limits by Baas’ happily deranged eclectic melting pot: they play with ‘classical’ precision, improvise parts of the music on the spot and go back and forth between highly danceable post-punk and Wagner-like ballades.