About the CD "The City of My Dreams":
"Initial impressions indicate a strong, very engaging and creative musician
with excellent arrangements. Congratulations! You are clearly an artist of
enormous talent and intelligence. I am admiring your artistry."
- Michael Haas, Producer -London ( Haas has produced artists such as Luciano Pavarotti & Plácido Domingo )
"A stunningly multi-talented one-woman-army of singer, composer, painter and inventive arranger, equally capable of creating slow-dance mantras as well as brusquely avantgardistic vaudeville-style Lieder".
-Tobias Fischer, Tokafi ( DE )
" ....as a composer, lyricist and vocalist we pretty much have to acknowledge that Sophie is a genuine triple threat. Sophie has serious writing skills – both as a composer and as a lyricist. She also has impressive vocal chops. She can swoop from whisper soft to serious force in a heartbeat. Lets close by tipping our hats to her artistry – her voice remains strong and apparently capable of doing just about anything she wants. In some ways it reminds me of Sweeney Todd or something in that the music seems conventional on the surface but can be pretty disturbing below. Sophie is sounding more than ever like Kurt Weill is her uncle....... ."
- Slim & Michael Coyle, Cadence Magazine ( USA ) ©Cadence Magazine 2008 .www.cadencebuilding.com ph: 315-287-2852.
"A multifaceted, fascinating singer and a witty self confident composer and sophisticated arranger. Her flexible voice is well suited either to sing Brechtian songs or Hollywood musicals and able to get nordic nocturnal moods, agile vocalise and Hendrix-inspired rhythms. Always with great confidence and extreme dexterity moving from very high registers to almost guttural sounds, keeping good care of swing and melody. "
-Vincenzo Roggero, All About Jazz Italia. ( IT )
"This exceptional Swedish artist is not only a vocal virtuoso in the delivery of the 17 pieces she composed, set the text, and arranged on this exhilarating album—she is also an outstanding talent, whose emphatic and thoughtful impression in the future of contemporary music, jazz, and song comes around very rarely. Sophie Dunér has attained the most unattainable, namely, to be at eye level with Kurt Weill, Lennon/McCartney, Gordon Sumner, Ricky Lee Jones and Kate Bush."
-Frank Becker, Musenblätter. ( DE )
"Between Kronos and Krause. Her vocal equilibrities and her capability to switch between different styles makes her one of the most interesting singers in our country.The voice rattles , falls to later catch itself in the higher register. It throws itself into black holes in between stones and rocks and spreads itself in thin ribbons of waves."
- Guido Zeccola, Tidningen Kulturen . ( SE )
"This remarkable talent wears many hats, including painter, poet and arranger.Known primarily for her bold modern classical-oriented vocal numbers backed by string quartet or orchestra, she is a prime example of this new wave of "culturanauts" hurtling over commercial barriers and breaking down conceptual doors."
-Bill Barnes, Jazz.com ( USA )
" When I listen to The City of My Dreams, it reminds me of an era with strong vocal artists, now legends, and powerful bands in the back. That’s right, it reminds me of 30s and 40s big band with the legendary sounds of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Johnnie Mathis, but with a modern tone."
- Jason Dowd, The Expressionist. ( USA )
"Brecht and Hendrix with strings in a jazz club....thick substance and a distinct personality, which distance her from the gazillions of clones infecting this genre, are present in several of these pieces. There’s much to savour in this excellent work, worthy of the utmost attention."
-Massimo Ricci, Temporary Fault . ( IT )
" A fabulous singer with strong techniques and the capability to sing out of the heart. A beautiful album with intriguing compositions."
- Eelco Schilder, Folk World. ( DE )
" Feline she switches from the low-key and intimate into virtuoso pirouettes high up in the registers, as swift and
imperceptibly as she slides from semi-smoky cabaret atmospheres into expressive atonalities. With a brilliant vocal
art, it’s also prodigiously beautiful in its searching and exploring aesthetic values."
- Magnus Eriksson, Rootsy.nu ( SE )
Sophie Dunér is a singer/composer who, with her latest album, "The City of My Dreams", has produced ( composed, arranged & sung ) a record of her original music for voice and string quartet. She slides between genres such as jazz, classical, world & alternative.
The album features Carles Fibla, Emilio Robles ( violins ) on tracks 1 & 3-17, Elena Borderías ( viola ) on tracks 3 & 5-17, Guillermo Martínez ( cello ) on tracks 3 & 5-17, Silvia Villamor ( viola ) on tracks 1 & 4, Marina Sorin ( cello )
on tracks 1, 2 & 4, Diego Galaz ( violin ) on track 2, Paco Ortega ( viola ) on track 2 and Hector Rojo ( bass ) on track 2.
Sophie´s previous album "The Rain in Spain" was recorded with C.I.M.P records in N.Y, USA in 2005, together with Rory Stuart, Matt Penman & Kahlil Kwame Bell.
Sophie has lived in the USA, Spain and Sweden, having performed extensively throughout the world, also being a graduate from Berklee College of Music.
She has collaborated with musicians such as Rory Stuart, Matt Pennman, Kahlil Kwame Bell, Sten Höstfält, Juerg Wickihalder, Guillermo Klein, Aaron Goldberg, Francis Schwartz, Manuel Ceide, Henk Alkema, Fernando Tarrés, Gilad Atzmon, Paul Clarvis, Martin France, David Boato, Leif Jordanson, Agustín Gerenu etc
In 2004 she was invited by Karlheinz Stockhausen to join his course in Germany and followed up in 2005 supported by a grant of € 3000 from the Swedish Arts Council.
In 2008 she received a grant of € 5000 from the Swedish Arts Council.
Some of her appearances has been at venues such as The Gothenburg Symphony Hall, Stockholm Jazz Festival, Sapporo Snow Festival, Glarus Jazz Festival, Jazz en la Costa, Getxo Jazz Festival, Lugo Jazz Festival, Baltic Jazz Festival, Pizza Express Jazz Club, Small´s Jazz Club, Birdland, Kavehaz Jazz Gallery, Circulo de Bellas Artes, Café Central, Scandinavium, Galleri Gummesons, Stockholm New Music Festival etc
About the CD "The Rain in Spain":
“ Once in a while, out of the great sea of noise known as independent music, one encounters a rare and exotic species. Such a discovery is the enigmatic Swedish singer, composer, poet and painter Sophie Dunér. Prolific, fearless and quirky.Here she proves she can hold her own in the jazz world as well, backed by a New York-based minimalist trio.It is the perfect vehicle for Dunér's quasi-cryptic lyrics and edgy vocal style. Two Time Losers teeters between cabaret and bluesy acoustic jazz, rewarding the ear with a raw, fresh intensity that well serves the irony of the lyrics. Dunér's deceptively sweet voice betrays a dark undercurrent. This is East Village coffeehouse poetry-jazz, to be served with bitter espresso, trails of cigarette smoke and black fishnet stockings. Sophie, you are just too cool. "
-Bill Barnes, Jazz.com.
"....her sensibility and smarts are what make her songs— Dunér behaves according to the familiar credos of Modern Art....”
- Michael Coyle, Cadence Magazine
“Sophie Dunér is a very original singer and a strong composer that writes lyrics that are everything but trivial ....The answear to C.I.M.P and Bob Rusch, to Blue Note and Norah Jones is called Sophie Dunér."
-Vittorio Lo Conte, .All About Jazz Italia.
“ Sophie Dunér comes up with something personal and persuasive to say.... some Joan Armatrading in her warm, folksy way of phrasing .....a little Anita O’Day in there too.....reminds me of the mellower side of Patty Waters mixed with Nina Simone.....Yma Sumac-evocative octave leaps."
-Derek Taylor, Dusted Magazine.
“Sophie Dunér is much more than just a ( jazz ) singer. With her incredible width, the possibilities of her voice and loads of imagination, she creates her own song universe between jazz, chanson, folk and fast poetry slam songs and could create an addiction. And with her love for Duke Ellington, that surely would sharpen his ears if he had heard her version of ”Caravan”, ”Lush Life” etc. Ani di Franco with a hat but more jazzy......."
- Peter Bickl, Nordische Musik.
“It dawns upon me with brute force what an excellent, yes, brilliant, composer Sophie Dunér is, in a complete, genuine sterlingway. Her texts – intelligent, biting, sardonic, parodic, humorous but also serious and gentle – are at one with her tunes, her arrangements, and such is the vibrant atmosphere around her creativity that I don’t fear to say that she is among the top ten writers of contemporary jazz tunes in the world.”
- Ingvar Loco Nordin, Sonoloco Record Reviews.
"Textually, her occasionally cryptic lyrics explore the vagaries of male-female relationships with a wryness, authenticity, and humor that springs from real life experience—no starry eyed romanticism here. Rain in Spain is good music, fine singing, and interesting writing ably performed by four excellent musicians. Let’s hear more from Sophie and company."
-David Kane, Cadence Magazine
“I was impressed by her form-filling yet ethereal vocal integration within a jazz combo and also by her original compositions. Sophie Dunér is both a personal and original singer and a composer of substance. Her talents are well in evidence on this recording."
- Bob Rusch, C.I.M.P. producer
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