Eivør Pálsdóttir

Career

At 13 she had her first performance on Faroese television and won a national singing contest the same year. In 1999 at the age of 15, Eivør joined the rock band Clickhaze.

One year later in 2000, she released her first album Eivør Pálsdóttir. It is a mixture of classical Faroese ballads accompanied only by guitar and bass with jazz influences and texts by famous Faroese writers. Many of the songs were written by Eivør. By this time she was already a professional musician.

In 2001, she won the national Faroese band contest with her band - Clickhaze Prix Føroyar. In 2002, Eivør moved to Reykjavík to study classical and jazz music. A mentor of the Faroese music scene, Kristian Blak asked her to be the lead singer for the jazz group - Yggdrasil, which released their first album the same year.

Well known as a jazz performer, she released a rock album with Clickhaze the same summer, thus proving her wide range again. Touring with Clickhaze in the Faroes, to Sweden, Denmark (Roskilde Festival), Iceland and Greenland was a great success.

After her second solo album Krákan, the perhaps most important event in her young career was the nomination for the Icelandic Music Awards in no fewer than three categories in 2003. She was awarded best singer and best performer - normally only given to Icelandic artists.

Educated as a classical vocalist, Eivør also sings with the Faroese symphony orchestra and sings solo in Kristian Blak's 2004 opera Firra.

Her album eivør from November 2004 featuring the Canadian Bill Bourne seems to be the best selling Faroese album in the U.S. and Canada ever. Bourne's companionship with acoustic guitar gave the entire project a great bit of American country music, with Eivør contributing several songs in Faroese. In Iceland it was again in the charts, and was nominated for the Icelandic Music Award - together with an album by Björk. At the Awards ceremony on 2 February 2005 in Reykjavík, neither Eivør nor Björk had success, though.

On 9 February, Eivør was named Faroese of the year 2004 (ársins føroyingur 2004) - being the first person to ever bear this title - for "Putting the Faroe Islands on the map in a positive way with her songs".

On 7 March 2005, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) big band issued its 40th anniversary album. All titles on that CD are written and sung by Eivør. Once again she was honored in Iceland on 16 June with the national theatre award Gríma for her composing and performance in the piece Úlfhamssaga, based on the Norse sagas.

Eivør's 5th album Human Child was produced by Dónal Lunny and was issued in an English and a Faroese version under the title Mannabarn. It was released on 18 July 2007 in the Faroes. The album was recorded throughout 2006 and early 2007 in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. This was followed by an Irish tour in Summer 2007. The album charted on the Tracklisten, the official Danish Albums Chart.

In 2008, Eivør collaborated with the English classical composer Gavin Bryars on Tróndur i Gøtu, a work for two voices - hers and that of Faroese bass Rúni Brattaberg - choir and chamber orchestra (Aldúbaran), based on a 10th-century Faroese saga hero. It was performed in Gøtu, Faroe Islands on 12 July 2008. She has recently started working with Gavin Bryars again on a chamber opera Marilyn Forever based on Marilyn Monroe, with libretto by Marilyn Bowering and produced by Aventa (Canada) in which Eivør plays the leading role. Parts of this were developed during a workshop in Banff, Canada in June 2010 and two scenes were performed there on 12 June 2010. The work is scheduled for first performances in Vancouver and Victoria in February 2012.

Eivør's 2010 album Larva presented a new side of Eivør, as she moves away from the folk sound of recent years into a more experimental and raw musical style. It included haunting renditions of arrangements by Faroe Islands classical composer, Tróndur Bogason, the Icelandic string quartet Kaputt, the Faroese choir Mpiri and a children's choir from Eivør's hometown of Gøta.

In 2012 she married the Faroese composer Tróndur Bogason; they worked together with her album Room, which won huge acclaim and made her win three awards, "Best female singer" and "Best artist" and "Best album of the Year" during the Planet Awards(Faroese music awards). In 2013 she released a single "Dansaðu vindur", a cover of the 1996 Swedish Eurovision song "Den vilda" by One More Time with new lyrics. The song charted in Iceland.

In 2016, Eivør appeared at the start of the E3 2016 Sony Press Conference where she along with the live orchestra performed the theme to the upcoming God of War entry.

Albums

Singles

Also appears on

Honours