Vocal Artist/Singer/Composer

RUTH WILHELMINE MEYER

Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer is a distinctive voice artist, multi-vocalist, and composer who explores her instrument to create music through vocal timbres with different ranges of expression and colour. The music is filtered through several genres and stylistic expressions that range from classical vocal tradition, selected ethnic traditions including throat singing, Norwegian folk music, multiphonics, and pure noise music. Her voice range is from 32 Hz to 2800 Hz, almost 7 octaves. This expression makes her popular for concerts, stage productions, film music, sound installations, and recordings all over the world.

With her multi-expressive vocal expression, she creates sound worlds from the realistic to the unrealistic, the expected and the unexpected, and the sound becomes the narrator. She collaborates a lot with instrumentalists and singers from various genres and cultures. She has been the vocal soloist in the World Orchestra/Warsaw under the direction of Grzech Piotrowski. Jazz pianist Helge Lien and organist/composer Nils Henrik Asheim are among her closest collaboration partners.

The opera “Camille Claudel – An Inner Opera” was written especially for her voice by the composer Steffen Schorn. The opera had its premiere on Bayrischer Rundfunk in November 2022 and was recorded in Deutschlandfunk in December 2022.

In 2014-2016, she received the State’s 3-year artist grant and has previously received various grants. In 2020, she received the State’s 10-year senior grant for artists and was awarded the Edvardprisen 2019 from TONO for the music on the CD and the concert concept KLANGBIOTOPER. In the same year, she became a member of the Norwegian Composers Association and in 2020 she also became a member of NOPA. In recent years, she has also composed music for musicians/ensembles, such as the commissioned work for the Telemark Festival’s 30th anniversary 2019: “Haugenbonden” and “Lokeslottet,” commissioned work for the Norwegian Soloist Choir premiered in the University’s Aula February 2023.

She received her education from the Mozarteum, Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Salzburg in 1992, as well as a cand philol from the Grieg Academy in 1994. Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer has a long career as a voice teacher/coach and conductor and is a sought-after seminar holder all over the world. She works as a university lecturer at the Norwegian Theater Academy in Fredrikstad and teaches at the academy for folk music: Ole Bull Academiet.