Contact:
mail@tovetraesdal.no

Tove Traesdal, mezzosoprano and psychologist


Short presentation

Tove Traesdal is a Norwegian mezzosoprano who specializes in the performance of Lieder and church music. She has an extensive repertoire covering 8 languages. One of her main interests as a singer is to link Lieder thematically with visual art, and this has led to a number of performances in collaboration with museums and galleries. She has given numerous recitals in Norway, and she has appeared as a soloist in many oratorio performances, and on radio, CDs and TV. (See CV below.)
Traesdal is also trained as a psychologist. She specializes in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and is a member of the Institute for Psychotherapy in Oslo, where she is a training and supervising psychotherapist. She also completed university studies in music, sociology and educational science, and she has worked as a voice teacher, privately, in secondary schools and at the University of Oslo. She is active as a writer and lecturer in both her professions and has published in local and international journals.

New CD 2010 – songs by Pauline Hall

In November 2010 Tove Traesdal releases a new CD with hitherto unrecorded songs by the Norwegian composer Pauline Hall (1890-1969.) She is considered to be one of Norway's two foremost female composers from the pre-war generations, the other being Agathe Backer-Groendahl. From the 1920s, Hall was a towering figure in Norwegian musical life as a composer of songs, piano pieces and chamber music as well as works for orchestra and the theatre. Also famous as a music critic, writer and translator of international music literature, she chaired the Norwegian branch of the International Society for Contemporary Music for 23 years. Her output comprises some 50 songs which have scarcely been sung since they were first performed during the 1920s, when they were well received.  Most of them have survived as manuscripts in our National Library. They richly deserve to be heard again. (“Til en kunstner/To an artist”, PROPRIO, PRO-0110. English resumés in booklet.)

CV as singer

Tove Traesdal was born in Oslo. She trained as a singer in Denmark with Prof. Peer Birch at the  Conservatory of Aarhus, and  later  with Prof. Dorothy Irving in Sweden. She has also studied individually and in masterclasses with many other internationally renowned teachers including Oren Brown, NY, Susanna Eken, Copenhagen, Anna Reynolds, Bayreuth, Hugues Cuenod, Switzerland and Ian Partridge, London. She works as a freelance singer.

She made her official debut in the Gamle Logen in Oslo 1993, and was described by critics as a ”strong Lieder talent”. She has given numerous recitals, including at the Bergen International Festival in 94 and in Copenhagen during the Grieg jubilee in 95. Her debut CD ”With Grieg in Europe”, 1995, VCD 19106, accompanied by the Norwegian pianist Einar Henning Smebye, includes works by Grieg, Heise, Brahms and Ravel.  In Autumn 97 she gave a recital of works by female composers in Universitetets Aula, Oslo, with Jorunn Marie Bratlie as her accompanist. As well as performing on TV and on Norwegian Radio P2, she has appeared as soloist in a number of oratorio performances, including Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Rossini’s Messe Solennelle, Requiems by Mozart and Duruflé and settings of the Stabat Mater by Pergolesi and Dvôrak. She has also performed in Denmark, Latvia and Germany and she has participated in many productions as an assistant member of the chorus of the Norwegian Opera in Oslo.