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Susanne Abbuehl

Swiss/Dutch singer and composer Susanne Abbuehl was born in Bern, Switzerland, on July 30, 1970. Drawn to music and language early on, composing songs and writing words in her own language, she started studying the harpsichord as a child. At age seventeen, she moved to Los Angeles where she graduated from high school and started taking lessons in classical singing. She was a member of a high school jazz group that toured the U.S. and Canada. Back in Europe, she took up professional education in jazz and classical voice at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where she studied with Rachel Gould and the late Jeanne Lee. She earned a Masters of Arts degree in Performance and Music Pedagogy, graduating cum laude.

Abbuehl also studied North Indian classical vocal music with Dr. Indurama Srivastava in Amsterdam and later became a student of famed master singer Dr. Prabha Atre in Bombay, to whom she regularly returns.

She studied composition and analysis with Dutch composer Diderik Wagenaar.

Her recordings for ECM, „April“ (2001), and “Compass” (2006) received wide critical acclaim internationally. „April“ won an EDISON Music Award (Dutch Grammy) in 2002.

2013 brought the release of „The Gift“, her third recording for ECM. It features compositions by Susanne Abbuehl for poems by Sara Teasdale, Emily Brontë and Emily Dickinson. Produced by Manfred Eicher, the line-up includes Dutch pianist Wolfert Brederode, Swiss flugelhornist Matthieu Michel and Finnish drummer Olavi Louhivuori.

With her own group, Susanne Abbuehl has toured extensively and was invited to perform at major festivals in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa.

She performed and recorded with musicians from various musical backgrounds, including the Jeanne Lee Music & Dance Ensemble, Christof May, Stephan Oliva, Michel Portal and Paolo Pandolfo.

Susanne Abbuehl has been commissioned to compose for various settings, including work for radio, theatre, and sound environments.

Her composition “Der Gaukler Tag”, a radio play produced for Swiss National Radio SRF with Claude Salmony, performed by her students in Lucerne, and featuring her colleague Lauren Newton as well as actress Marie Jung as speakers, was nominated for the 2013 Prix Marulić.

In 2016, Susanne Abbuehl was one of the recipients of the Swiss Music Prize. In 2017, Princess, the release by Stephan Oliva, Susanne Abbuehl and Oyvind Hegg-Lunde for the French label Vision Fugitive, won the Grand Prix du Disque Jazz Académie Charles Cros. And in January 2018, Susanne Abbuehl won the European Musician 2017 award from the French Académie du Jazz.

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Extended Analysis

Susanne Abbuehl: The Gift

Read "Susanne Abbuehl: The Gift" reviewed by John Kelman


There was a time when artists were expected to release a record every year--sometimes a very good thing, as there was so much development going on that there was plenty to document; other times a less-than-ideal situation, as some artists simply didn't have that much music in them, so releasing albums too frequently often worked against--rather than for--them. Swiss-born/Netherlands-resident singer Susanne Abbuehl may, with The Gift, only have four albums to her name since her 1997 debut, the long out-of-print ...

94
Album Review

Susanne Abbuehl: Compass

Read "Compass" reviewed by Budd Kopman


Compass is vocalist Susanne Abbuehl's second recording for ECM, after 2001's April. Five years is a long time between albums, but the wait was well worth it. Her band has not changed, except that Lucas Niggli has replaced Samuel Rohrer on drums and percussion, and Michel Portal has been added as a second clarinet on two tracks. The clarinet, particularly in its lower range, can have a vocal quality, and Christof May's lines go beyond mere accompaniment ...

271
Album Review

Susanne Abbuehl: Compass

Read "Compass" reviewed by John Kelman


Anyone fortunate enough to have heard Susanne Abbuehl's out-of-print first record, I Am Rose (Evoke, 1997), knows that while the singer's musical direction was already developing, it was not until her 2001 ECM debut, April, that it became fully realized. Compass is a logical evolution, but it manages a few surprises, finding Abbuehl and her unorthodox trio becoming even more integrated, intuitive and introspective.

Abbuehl continues to defy convention. In contrast to jazz singers who search for new ways to ...

134
Album Review

Susanne Abbuehl: Compass

Read "Compass" reviewed by Nic Jones


In the midst of a saturated field of female singers, Susanne Abbuehl stands out like a beacon. She does not choose the path of least resistance, always making sure she's pictured with her mouth open warbling her way through a cross-section of the tried-and-trusted. Instead she employs the timbre of her voice as an end in itself, never overstating her case. Such qualities, when tied with the fact that she goes in a whole lot more for musical settings of ...

158
Album Review

Susanne Abbuehl: April

Read "April" reviewed by Craig W. Hurst


The music on Susanne Abbuehl's recent ECM release April draws on diverse musical sources that result in a product that extends beyond that which is usually expected from a recording labeled as jazz. The music of Abbuehl and her fellow musicians at times resembles music more closely akin to an impression of the spare and angular sounds of early 20th century German Expressionism, or modern avant-garde music. Overall, there is a delightfully haunting cool edge to the music on April ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

The Gift

Evoke Prod.
2013

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Compass

ECM Records
2006

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April

ECM Records
2002

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April

Evoke Prod.
2001

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I Am Rose

Evoke Prod.
1997

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