Kristin Norderval
Soprano
Kristin Norderval, soprano, is a performer, composer, and improviser who performs a repertoire that spans the renaissance to the avant-garde. Profiled by The New York Times in “Downtown Divas Expand their Horizons”, and hailed as one of “new music’s best” by the Village Voice, she has performed at festivals throughout the world, and her collaborations have included work with choreographers, sculptors, filmmakers, and installation artists as well as other musicians. Her credits as a soloist include performances with the Netherlands Dance Theater, the San Francisco Symphony, the Oslo Sinfonietta, and the Philip Glass Ensemble. She has recorded for CRI, Nonesuch, Koch, Deep Listening, Eurydice, Aurora, and Point.
Both as a composer and as a performer Ms. Norderval has specialized in developing new works for voice, with special emphasis on small-scale opera, cross-disciplinary work, and works with interactive technology. Works specifically composed for Ms. Norderval include the opera-installation Agora by Natasha Barrett, Dance Alloy’s production of Pope Joan, a dance opera by Anne LeBaron, (a joint commission with the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble), and She Lost Her Voice That’s How We Knew, a one-woman opera for voice and electronics by Frances White which has been presented in the United States, Norway, Austria, Spain, and the Netherlands.
Music for the stage has figured prominently in Kristin Norderval’s compositional work as well. Commissions have included works for Den Anden Opera in Copenhagen, the Bucharest International Dance Festival in Romania, the EAR WE ARE festival in Biel, Switzerland, and Jill Sigman/Thinkdance in New York City. In 2006 the American Composers Forum selected Ms. Norderval to be a recipient of the Jerome Composers Commissioning Program for a song cycle for the viol quartet Parthenia, with soprano soloist and live electronics. In 2004 and 2005 Ms. Norderval was the recipient of a Norwegian Artist’s Stipend (Statens kunstnerstipend) for the development of new multi-disciplinary work, and in 2005 she was also the winner of the Henry Cowell Award from the American Music Center. In 2002 she received artist-in-residencies from Harvestworks Digital Arts studio and from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to develop a wireless midi-glove interface for her real-time sampling and audio processing system.
Ms. Norderval holds a Bachelor of Music in both voice and composition from the University of Washington, a Master of Music in Voice from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Voice from the Manhattan School of Music. In 2003/04 she was a Visiting Scholar at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in the department of Performance Studies. Kristin Norderval is currently a Research Fellow at the University College of Østfold in Halden, Norway, focusing on the process of creation and development of collaborative work within the cross-disciplinary performing arts.