Kristin Norderval

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. She has performed as a soloist with the Oslo Sinfonietta, the San Francisco Symphony and the Philip Glass Ensemble, and has been a featured soloist in several dance-theater works: among them the Netherlands Dance Theater's production of Martha Clarke's An Uncertain Hour (Lincoln Center, the American Dance Festival, the Netherlands) and Dance Alloy's production of Pope Joan, a dance-opera by Anne LeBaron written specifically for Norderval and premiered in Pittsburgh in October 2000. She Lost Her Voice That's How We Knew (2004), a one-woman opera for voice and electronics composed by Frances White with libretto and direction by Valeria Vasilevski was developed especially for Norderval, and has been presented in productions in the United States, Norway, Austria, Spain and the Netherlands.

Music for dance, theater, film and performance has figured prominently in Norderval's compositional work. She created the music for SUB, a short dance film by Kjersti Martinsen; the soundtrack for GOD IN THE MACHINE, an evening-length film written and directed by Kathleen Harty; Proud To Be Here a dance-theater piece by Katharina Vogel (commissioned by the Bucharest International Dance Festival) and for She Speaks: The Weird Sisters by Laura Shapiro. Multi-media works include Lydavtrykk, a photography and sound installation; Warum küssen die Menschen? - a work for two singers, signal processing and live video developed with Hanna Hänni for the EAR WE ARE festival in Biel, Switzerland; and "TAXI!" an interactive performance developed with three video artists for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo. Dance scores include jill sigman/thinkdance's Pulling the Wool: An American Landscape of Truth and Deception (2004) commissioned by Dixon Place for the Mondo Cane Festival and Carrie Ahern's RED (2006) commissioned by Danspace. Rupture, a second collaboration with Ms. Sigman commissioned by Danspace Project will premiere February 2007 in New York.

In 2002 Norderval received artist-in-residencies from Harvestworks Digital Media Arts and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Create@iEAR to develop a wireless midi-glove interface for her live computer processing system. This system was used in I Sing the Body Electric a collaborative work created for Den Anden Opera in Copenhagen (March 2004) and jill sigman/thinkdance's Pulling the Wool an installation-performance in New York, New York (June 2004), and continues to be developed.

Norderval holds a Bachelor of Music in composition from the University of Washington, a Master of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory, and a Doctorate in vocal performance 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 Performance Studies department, and in 2004 and 2005 she was the recipient of a Norwegian Artist's Stipend (Statens kunstnerstipend) for the creation of new work. More recently she was awarded a Henry Cowell grant by the American Music Center (2005) which "supports, encourages, and recognizes composers who exemplify the great American composer Henry Cowell's spirit of innovation and experimentalism in their work" and an American Composer Forum's Jerome Composer's Commissioning Program grant (2006) for a song cycle for the viol quartet Parthenia, with soprano soloist and live electronics. Norderval has recorded for Koch, CRI, Nonesuch, Mode, Deep Listening, Eurydice, Aurora and Point records.

Dr. Norderval was formerly Artistic Director for the Norwegian Theatre Academy in Fredrikstad, Norway and currently is a Research Fellow at the University of Østfold in Halden, Norway, focusing on the creative process within inter-cultural and cross-disciplinary performing arts. She is a member of the electro-acoustic live processing chamber music duo Zanana with Monique Buzzarté and the acoustic free improvising quintet New Circle Five.

Source: norderval.org, 06.09.2010, http://www.norderval.org/

Doctor of Musical Arts (Vocal Performance), Manhattan School of Music, 1993

Master of Music (Voice), San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 1987

Bachelor of Music (Composition, Voice), University of Washington, 1984