Noa Fort

Israeli-born vocalist, pianist, composer, and music therapist Noa Fort is blurring the lines between written and composed, group and individual, inner and outer soundscape, giving and receiving; all on the path to healing, with music.

After a short stint as a biologist, researching bird migration in the Israeli desert, Fort decided to go back to her first love, music, and pursued a degree in Music Performance (first for voice, then for piano) at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. She became involved in the music scene in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, leading a Jazz quintet as well as working as a side woman for several bands and projects. She also started volunteering with teenagers with special needs, and slowly realized what she’d always known - that music can be used for more than self- expression; it can be used to create a connection where words fail, a path to healing, and a terrain to explore the self in relation to others.

In 2013, Fort moved to NYC, to pursue both her performance career and to become a music therapist. She enrolled for a Master’s degree in Music Therapy at NYU, and interned at the Kings County Mental Health Units, using songwriting, improvisation, and singing as her main tools. Now a New York State-licensed creative arts therapist and board-certified music therapist, Fort is focused on finding ways in which music can be used to address the different needs of her diverse clientele. She is constantly expanding her listening practice.

While at school, Fort formed a trio, which later became the Noa Fort Quartet. The group developed a unique, cohesive, exploratory and fresh sound, playing frequently at noted venues Cornelia Street Cafe and Rockwood Music Hall. Aside from her work as a leader, Fort started collaborating and performing with greats such as William Parker, Hamid Drake, Ken Filiano, Francisco Mela, Michael Attias, Satoshi Takeishi, Mary Prescott, and Simon Jermyn, among others.

In 2018 Fort released her debut album as a bandleader and composer, ‘No World Between Us’. Critically acclaimed, its release led to bookings at the DC Jazz Festival and BRIC Jazz Festival. All About Jazz called it “an album of comforting originality on all fronts… lyrics brimming with timeless themes”.

In this new release, Everyday Actions, her second album as a leader and composer, Fort is using her voice and piano to draw abstract musical pictures. Abandoning lyrics almost completely, it is the timbre, tone and emotion in her voice that bring about the lyrical depth of the songs. Borrowing from her work as a therapist, Fort is giving space to the listener to bring his or her own meaning and interpretation to each piece.

Recording began on March 16 2020, moments before NYC went into months-long lockdown. The uncertainty and wariness were in the air as the quartet recorded their takes. Later in the pandemic, Fort decided to continue the project with solo pieces, expressing in sound the solitude that was the characteristic of the past year. Eventually, these became the bulk of the album.

The wide experience Fort has with the human experience informs her work as a composer/performer; the minute shifts in mood, attention and color are all taken in as important information. This is her work as a composer and improviser; listening to her bandmates, tuned into the soundscape of the other person, of herself. It is in everyday actions that healing can take place, not in the big resolutions that are made and forgotten; changes of pattern, slow attention to daily actions, tiny moments of clarity.
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