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.
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