Rebekka Bakken

SINGER, HOLLYWOOD IN VIENNA 2010Due to her extraordinary and extremely mutable voice, which impresses with the ability of reaching several octaves, this singer became one of the most successful veterans of a new generation of Scandinavian jazz vocalists in the area of folk, pop and jazz.

As a teenager Rebekka Bakken has gathered a lot of experience as a singer in the Norwegian rhythm & blues, rock and funk scene. In 1995 she moved to New York in order to devote herself to her singing carrier. That is when she has begun writing her own texts and compositions, under the growing influence of the jazz music. At the end of the 90s she has met the Austrian jazz-guitar player Wolfgang Muthspiel. The pieces, which they have produced in 2001 and 2002 as a duo, made her famous and known to a wider circle of listeners. Still in New York, Bakken has also met the German pianist Julia Hülsmann. The result of their acquaintance was a CD Scattering Poems published in 2003, in which Bakken interprets the texts of the American poet E.E. Cummings to the music of the Julia Hülmann’s Trio. This CD has gotten a lot of attention in the jazz music scene. In the same year she left New York in order to find her new home in Vienna, where she got a contract with the Universal Music label. After studio recordings with the famous Norwegian sound specialist Bugge Wesseltoft in Oslo, she has published her first solo CD in 2003, followed by a second one in 2005. Both albums show popular singer / songwriter influences without completely turning her back to the jazz. The recordings for her third solo CD I keep my cool,, which was published in September 2006, were supported by her countryman Eivind Aarset. Craig Street, who has been successfully working with musicians such as Cassandra Wilson, Jimmy Scott and Liz Wright, produced her fourth CD “Morning Hours” published in 2009. The CD Morning Hours recorded together with the Julia Hülsmann Trio has received the German Jazz Award in 2003. In 2006 Rebekka Bakken was for the first time nominated for an AMADEUS - Austrian Music Award in the category “National jazz / blues / folk album of the year”. She won this prize in the same category in 2007.Bakkens regularly gives very successful concerts in the Viennese Konzerthaus.www.rebekkabakken.com